The Spotlight for February is on the popular sub-genre of courtroom mysteries and legal thrillers. There are some great best-selling authors in this genre and some less well known ones for you to try out. The focus of the courtroom mysteries and legal thrillers is usually on lawyers and the system of justice which offers writers plenty of scope for mystery, suspense and action as the lawyers or their employees try to solve their cases. Usually they are trying to prove the innocence of their client at the risk of their own safety or comfort.
Some authors for you to comment on or try out in this genre are William Bernhardt, John Grisham, Michael Connelly, Linda Fairstein, Richard North Patterson, Philip Margolin, Steve Martini, Earle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series, John Mortimer’s Rumple series, James Grippando, Lisa Scottoline, and Scott Turow.
If you prefer a classic, try To Kill a Mockingbird which was first published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize, in which a lawyer in the depression-era South defends a black man accused of rape.
One of my personal favourites is John Grisham’s tightly plotted Pelican Brief, and I also very much enjoyed the courtroom scenes in Jeffrey Archer’s A Prisoner of Birth which illustrates how easily and innocent man can be set up and sent to prison.