Recommendations based on "Watch Your Back!"

The bestselling legal thriller—and upcoming Netflix series—has charismatic defense attorney Mickey Haller taking on a slam-dunk court case involving a Beverly Hills playboy—but as it spirals into a nightmare, he finds himself in a fight for his life.Mickey Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers—they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence, it's about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it's even about justice.A Beverly Hills playboy arrested for attacking a woman he picked up in a bar chooses Haller to defend him, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years. It is a defense attorney's dream, what they call a franchise case. And as the evidence stacks up, Haller comes to believe this may be the easiest case of his career. Then someone close to him is murdered and Haller discovers that his search for innocence has brought him face-to-face with evil as pure as a flame. To escape without being burned, he must deploy every tactic, feint, and instinct in his arsenal—this time to save his own life.

*A Times thriller of the year* Following City on Fire and City of Dreams, City in Ruins is the explosive, impossible to put down conclusion to New York Times bestselling author Don Winslow's epic, genre-defining crime trilogy and the final book of Winslow's extraordinary career. 'A gangland trilogy to equal THE GODFATHER. If you like SCARFACE and GOODFELLAS, this is where it's at.' STEPHEN KING Sometimes you have to become what you hate to protect what you love. Danny Ryan is rich. Beyond his wildest dreams rich. The former dock worker, Irish mob soldier and fugitive from the law is now a respected businessman - a Las Vegas casino mogul and billionaire silent partner in a group that owns two lavish hotels. Finally, Danny has it all: a beautiful house, a child he adores, a woman he might even fall in love with. Life is good. But then Danny reaches too far. When he tries to buy an old hotel on a prime piece of real estate with plans to build his dream resort, he triggers a war against Las Vegas power brokers, a powerful FBI agent bent on revenge and a rival casino owner with dark connections of his own. Danny thought he had buried his past, but now it reaches up to him from the grave to pull him down. Old enemies surface, and when they come for Danny they vow to take everything - not only his empire, not just his life, but all that he holds dear, including his son. To save his life and everything he loves, Danny must become the ruthless fighter he once was - and never wanted to be again. Ranging from the gritty back rooms of Providence, RI to the power corridors of Washington, DC and Wall Street to the golden casinos of Las Vegas, City in Ruins is an epic crime novel of love and hate, ambition and desperation, vengeance and compassion.

Get hooked on Heck: the maverick detective who knows no boundaries. A grisly whodunit you won't be able to put down, perfect for fans of Stuart MacBride and TV series 'Luther'. Heck needs to watch his back. Because someone's watching him... Across the south of England, a series of bizarre but fatal accidents are taking place. So when a local businessman survives a near-drowning but is found burnt alive in his car just weeks later, DS Mark 'Heck' Heckenburg is brought in to investigate. Soon it appears that other recent deaths might be linked: two thieves that were bitten to death by poisonous spiders, and a driver impaled through the chest with scaffolding. Accidents do happen but as the body count rises it's clear that something far more sinister is at play, and it's coming for Heck too...

When a prominent family is murdered and their teenage daughter is nowhere to be found, Mack Bolan knows something is shady in Quincyville, Kansas. His plan had been to pass through while seeking a little downtime. But now he's not leaving until he finds out what evil has the town in its grip. After a soft probe, Bolan discovers that an industrial meth lab is functioning under the guise of a pharmaceutical company. A Mexican drug lord has taken control of the Midwest town and the local police are on the organization's payroll. The residents are too terrified to speak up. With the life of a young woman at stake, the time for defense is over. The Executioner decides to shut down the lab...and clean up the town for good.

New York Times bestselling author William Lashner returns with a brilliantly twisty tale that probes the dark side of the law -- and manUnlike the rest of you, I cheerfully admit to my own utter selfishness. I am self-made, self-absorbed, self-serving, self-referential, even self-deprecating, in a charming sort of way. In short, I am all the selfs except selfless. Yet every so often, I run across a force of nature that shakes my sublime self-centeredness to its very roots. Something that tears through the landscape like a tornado, leaving nothing but ruin and reexamination in its wake. Something like Bob.--Victor CarlA beautiful young woman is dead, her husband convicted of the murder. In seeking a new trial for the husband, defense attorney Victor Carl must confront not only a determined prosecutor and a police detective who might have set up his client, but also a strange little busybody named Bob.Bob has the aspiration, one could even say compulsion, to help those around him. And it usually works out well for all concerned, except when it ends in blood. But Victor doesn’t know that . . . yet.Thanks to Bob, Victor is suddenly dressing better, dating a stunning woman, and both his economic prospects and his teeth are gleaming. It’s all good, until Victor finds a troubling connection between Bob and the murdered wife. Is Bob a kind of saint or is this obsessive Good Samaritan, in reality, a murderer?Filled with the keen wit, deep poignancy, twisting suspense, and dark realism that has entranced readers, impressed reviewers, and made William Lashner’s previous novels bestsellers, Falls the Shadow is a riveting novel sure to leave readers eager for more.

In Murder One, bestselling author William Bernhardt thrusts idealistic Tulsa, Oklahoma, attorney Ben Kincaid into the most controversial courtroom challenge of his career . . . an explosive murder case that Kincaid will confront not only as a lawyer--but as a defendant.The crime is remarkably heinous: veteran police detective Joe McNaughton is found savagely slain, mutilated, and hung from a public fountain in downtown Tulsa. Scrawled across his chest in blood is the word FAITHLESS. The accused is a tabloid reporter's dream: stunning, nineteen-year-old Keri Dalcanton, a stripper involved in a kinky affair with the married McNaughton . . . and now cast by media, police, and public alike as a vengeful woman scorned. Powerful circumstantial evidence and the prosecution's deftly orchestrated attacks on the defendant's character have Kincaid's client all but convicted. Until a major technical blunder by overzealous cops overturns the case--and sets Keri Dalcanton free. Amid a firestorm of outrage, Ben maintains his client's innocence. But angry comrades of the victim are convinced otherwise--and vow to see "justice" done, by any means necessary.When a police raid on his office uncovers the bloody murder weapon, Ben gets a first-hand taste of the infamous Blue Squeeze. And as a new trial of Keri Dalcanton is launched, Ben faces his own day in court, charged with conspiracy and murder. What follows is a breathlessly twisting battle of legal wits--and lethal surprises--in which no holds are barred, no secrets are left unexposed, and ultimately, nothing is what it seems.With Murder One, the author of Silent Justice and Dark Justice breaks loose and surpasses his own acclaimed reputation for legal thrillers that are "engrossing" (Associated Press), "throat-grabbing" (New York Daily News), and "richly drawn" (Chicago Tribune). This is William Bernhardt's electrifying entrée into the front ranks of crime fiction.

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF DAVE BRANDSTETTER Death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter navigates the opposing realms of evangelical Christianity and the porn business while tracking a lost girl in late 1970s Los Angeles. Lon Tooker certainly fits the profile: big, strong, a Marine Corps veteran, and recently the target of evangelical crusader Gerald Dawson's wrath. Tooker's adult toys and pornography store on the local skid row has recently become the target of Dawson's church men's group and their destructive masked raids on "un-Christian" businesses. When Dawson is strangled to death by someone of Tooker's size and ability, the police see a smut-peddler with a motive. Case closed. But death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter doesn't like it. By all accounts Tooker is a softy incapable of such a crime. Actual evidence is nonexistent and assumptions many. And Dave particularly doesn't care for assumptions based on someone's sex life. But Dave is also navigating new personal territory. His father's death has left him bereaved and for the first time in a long time without a job. Dave quit the insurance company his father built and has struck out on his own as a private investigator. Add in his breakup with his recent partner and he's a man unencumbered. It's the late 1970s and Dave may be aging a bit but he's still handsome, wealthy, and recently in possession of a new convertible Triumph. Looks like it's not all hard work.

In his thrilling novels of suspense, William Bernhardt takes us into the fault lines of the criminal justice system, where one mistake, a twist of fate, or an explosive secret can mean the difference between justice and its cataclysmic undoing. InCapital Offense, attorney Ben Kincaid stands amid the chaos of a violent collision between vengeance and death–and it’s up to him to discover where the truth lies. Professor Dennis Thomas arrives at the law office of Ben Kincaid with a bizarre request: Thomas wants to know if Kincaid can help him beat a murder charge–of a killing yet to happen. The professor’s intended victim: a Tulsa cop who had refused to authorize a search for Thomas’s missing wife. For seven days, Joslyn Thomas had lain in the twisted wreckage of her car, dying a horrifically slow death in an isolated ravine. Now, insane with grief, Thomas wants to kill Detective Christopher Sentz. Kincaid warns him not to, but that very same day someone fires seven bullets into the police officer. Suddenly Kincaid’s conversation with Thomas is privileged and Thomas is begging Kincaid to defend him. Thomas claims he didn’t shoot Sentz–even though he’d wanted to. Something about the bookish, addled Dennis Thomas tugs on Kincaid’s conscience, and against all advice, he decides to represent this troubled man in the center of a media and political firestorm. But the trial doesn’t go Kincaid’s way, and a verdict of capital murder is bearing down on Dennis Thomas. That’s when Kincaid’s personal private detective, Loving, starts prying loose pieces of a shocking secret. Working in the shadows of the law, using every trick that works, Loving risks his life to construct an entirely new narrative about Detective Sentz, Joslyn Thomas, and madness in another guise: the kind that every citizen should fear, and no one will recognize–until it is too late.

All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop. He's the king of Manhattan North, a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of "Da Force." Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest and the baddest. What only a few know is that Denny Malone is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash. Now Malone is being squeezed by the feds, and he must walk the thin line between betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family and the woman he loves, and trying to survive while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all. The Force is a story of greed and violence, retribution and redemption that reveals the tensions between the police and the citizens they serve. A portrait of a courageous, heroic and deeply flawed man, it is a masterpiece of urban realism and the great cop novel of our time that only Don Winslow could write.

A CLASSIC NOVEL BY THE MASTER OF HARD-BOILED CRIME, THE HIGH WINDOW IS RAYMOND CHANDLER'S THIRD STORY FEATURING LACONIC PI PHILIP MARLOWE. 'He lay crumpled on his back. Very lonely, very dead. The safe door was wide open. A metal drawer was pulled out. It was empty now. There may have been money in it once.'Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. That's the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. That's also unlucky for a private investigator, because leaving a trail of corpses around LA puts cops' noses seriously out of joint. If Marlowe doesn't wrap this one up fast, he's going to end up either in jail or in a wooden box in the ground . . . 'Chandler's books should be read and judged, not as escapist literature, but as works of art' W.H. Auden 'Chandler grips the mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph 'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times 'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess