Lachlan Smith: 5 books

“Full of revelations, surprises and shocks,” the fifth Leo Maxwell mystery pits the underdog defense attorney against an unforgiving prison gang (Bookreporter).   Lachlan Smith’s Shamus Award–winning series continues with attorney-detective Leo Maxwell seeking an exit strategy from his family’s...

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...

In this “finely paced mystery,” a lawyer and amateur detective thinks he’s found the case that will make him—but it just might break him instead (Publishers Weekly). Now working as a criminal defense attorney in Oakland, Leo Maxwell thinks he’s found a new client after a mysterious...

A San Francisco lawyer confronts a case that strikes tragically close to home in an “outstanding” whodunit by a Shamus Award–winning author (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Leo Maxwell has left private practice and is working as a public defender in San Francisco. He and his co-counsel,...

This Shamus Award–winning mystery was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and Deadly Pleasures. Leo Maxwell grew up under the care of his older brother, Teddy, a successful yet reviled criminal defense attorney, after their father was jailed for their mother’s murder. Now a...