Habeas Corpus

Los Angeles, 1992

After eight soul-crushing years working as a divorce lawyer in Virginia, Charlie Trust has left the law behind. Burned out, disenchanted, and done with clients forever, he's living in a borrowed house on Malibu's Carbon Beach. All he wants to do now is drink beer on the deck, watch the sun set into the Pacific, and wonder what comes next.

Then the riots tear through Los Angeles, and America's paradise turns to ashes. The fires are still burning in Hollywood when Charlie's neighbor comes knocking and brings a different kind of disaster to his door.

Martin Cole, Detective Harry Murphy on one of TV's hottest cop shows, is a familiar face to most Americas. He's also a man whose wife has gone missing, and two hot-shot detectives from LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division don't think she walked away. They think Marty Cole killed her.

Marty pleads with Charlie to help him, and Charlie can't say no. Pulled into a case he never wanted, Charlie is faced with a choice between loyalty and truth, and between Hollywood and reality. On Carbon Beach, where multimillion-dollar houses stand watch over the relentless surf, everyone has secrets worth killing for.

Caught between calculating detectives, ruthless Hollywood lawyers, and his own client's deviousness, Charlie Trust learns that friendship can be the most dangerous weapon of all.

Set against the backdrop of Malibu in the uneasy spring of 1992, Habeas Corpus is the electrifying first installment of the Charlie Trust novels, a series that blends legal intrigue with California noir for fans of Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, and Scott Turow.

"Needham cares about justice, and about the ways pursuing it gives us difficult decisions to make in our own lives. Thanks for writing such good stuff, Jake." - Michael Tigar, legendary defense attorney and author of SENSING INJUSTICE

"If there's a living writer whose work makes me think of the great Raymond Chandler, it's Jake Needham. He's a prose master in the same vein." -- James David Audlin