Fox Is Framed
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From an award-winning author, a crime thriller with “some of the sharpest courtroom cut-and-thrust since Presumed Innocent” (Kirkus Reviews).
The Maxwell brothers both became lawyers, following in their father’s footsteps. But their father, Lawrence, had his career come to a screeching halt over two decades ago—when he was convicted of killing his wife.
Now, faced with evidence of stunning prosecutorial misconduct, a San Francisco judge has ordered a new trial for Lawrence. Soon after, a prison snitch and potential key witness turns up dead, and Lawrence’s son, Leo, finds himself trying to defend his father against murder charges both old and new—and confronting the darkness at the center of his own life, as he struggles to do right by both the law and his blood.
From the author of Bear Is Broken, which won the Shamus Award and was a Kirkus Reviews best book of the year, this novel in the Leo Maxwell series is “a sharp-edged legal thriller with the deep emotional undertones of family drama and tragedy” (New York Times–bestselling author Reed Farrel Coleman).
“Superlative . . . Smith is masterly in creating realistic courtroom scenes, including the subtleties of witness examination.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“The line Maxwell family members walk between innocence and guilt becomes more blurred with every step and turn of the page.” —Library Journal, starred review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The complex family dynamics that Smith explored in his earlier books only become more intriguing in his superlative third Leo Maxwell mystery (after 2014's Lion Plays Rough). In 1983, when he was 10 years old, Leo found his mother's battered corpse in their San Francisco home. His father, Lawrence, was convicted of her murder and has been behind bars for two decades. Leo's older brother, Teddy, despite being impaired by a bullet to the brain, has succeeded in getting the conviction reversed for prosecutorial misconduct. The prosecutor intends to retry Lawrence, bolstering the old case with a newly discovered motive for the murder jealousy and a supposed confession Lawrence made to an ex-con he befriended in jail. As Leo tries to connect with the father he never really knew and assist in Lawrence's defense against a new murder charge, he struggles with doubts about his father's innocence. Smith is masterly in creating realistic courtroom scenes, including the subtleties of witness examination, and, even more impressively, enhances the trial with the human drama of the Smith family.
