Overkill - by Joseph Teller

It’s a case no one can win - which is exactly why he’s going to take it.

Harrison J. Walker - Jaywalker, to the world - is a frayed-at-the-edges defense attorney with a ninety-percent acquittal rate, thanks to an obsessive streak a mile wide. But winning this case will take more than just dedication.

Seventeen-year-old Jeremy Estrada killed another boy after a fight over a girl: shot him point-blank between the eyes. No one disputes those facts. This kid is jammed up big-time, but almost unable to help himself. He’s got the face of an angel but can hardly string together three words to explain what happened that day…yet he’s determined to go to trial.

All they’ve got is a “yesbut” defense, as in: “Did you kill him?” “Yes, but….” Jaywalker is accustomed to bending the rules - this will stretch the law to the breaking point and beyond.

RELEASE DATE AUGUST 1, 2010

Both competitions were open to mysteries, thrillers, suspense novels, crime fiction and courtroom dramas–all categories that Teller’s novels qualify as.  Previous honorees include Lawrence Block, Tess Gerritsen, Lee Child, Walter Mosley, former A.D.A. Linda Fairstein, former Senator Fred Harris and Dennis Lehane.

Pretty good company!!!

A VERY BAD D.W.I.

     “So,” she said, raising herself on to one elbow, just high enough off the bed to reveal a single nipple, still visibly hard. “What do you do for a living, when you’re not busy knocking people down?”
      She was Amanda. At least that was as much of a name as he’d gotten out of her over the hour and twenty minutes since he’d literally knocked her to the ground by being overly aggressive with a sticking revolving door at the Forty-Second Street Public Library. Not that all of their time together since that moment had been devoted to small talk, or any other kind of talk, for that matter. Certainly not the last twenty minutes, anyway.
     “I’m a lawyer,” said Jaywalker. “Sort of.”
     “Sort of?”
     “I’m not practicing these days,” he explained.
     “What happened?” she asked. “You get burned out?”
     “No,” he said, “more like thrown out. I’m serving a three-year suspension.”
     “What for?”
     “Oh, various things. Cutting corners. Breaking silly rules. Taking risks. Pissing off stupid judges. The usual stuff.”

       Thus begins the third installment of the series, in which criminal defense attorney Harrison J. Walker, better known as Jaywalker, comes out of suspension from practice to represent a thoroughly unlikeable defendant on what indeed turns out to be a very bad drunk driving case, in which nine people–eight of them young children–died. The case, set in Rockland County, New York, pits Jaywalker against Abe Firestone, a veteran prosecutor intent on convicting the driver of murder on the theory that he drove so recklessly as to exibit a depraved indifference to human life. Hang on for a bumpy ride with plenty of twists and turns!

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