Amir Zawar is most definitely a stranger in the strange land of Marshall, Texas, which is home to a federal court favored by patent lawyers for its speedy trials and generous payouts. Hometown-boy James Euchre is the best of the shady lawyers. He agrees to handle an infringement case for Zawar, who turns out to be something of a hothead and manages to be cited for contempt of court. When the much-admired judge handling the case is found dead, Zawar is the likely suspect. He convinces Euchre to handle his defense, and the lawyer accepts, against his better judgment. What follows is a courtroom thriller with a dazzling cinematic quality, which is not surprising as Hartstone is an accomplished film and television writer. Euchre is a well-defined character, a man of depth, but it's the supporting cast that truly pops off the pages. This is an extremely promising debut, and readers will want more of Hartstone's razor's-edge style. A natural for fans of Grisham and Turow.

A Texas patent lawyer gets embroiled in a murder trial in this debut novel. The small city of Marshall, in eastern Texas, has for years been a favored venue for intellectual-property trials, the kind of cases in which the narrator, lawyer James Euchre, has thrived. In the book's well-paced opening, Euchre is retained for a new patent lawsuit, his client has a violent in-court episode after an adverse ruling by a judge who's been Euchre's mentor, and police arrest the client after the judge is murdered. Euchre is the genre's typically troubled, brooding quasi-underdog, a heavy drinker overshadowed by a famous lawyer father and struggling with his first murder trial. In this area he gets help and a little romance from one of the book's rare women, a former prosecuting attorney. For welcome glints of humor, there's Euchre's investigator, a wisecracking gay woman known as The Leg for her place-kicking prowess. For trademark humor, intellectual-property lawyers lunch at a place called Central Perks, recalling the Friends coffee shop. Hartstone, who has written screenplays for film (Shock and Awe) and TV (The Good Fight), displays a sure hand with the pointed adversarial dialogue that fuels legal thrillers. He builds a nice level of tension in Euchre's efforts to cope with an abrasive, evasive client and in the lawyer's legal missteps and local feuds, even combining the two when Euchre goes after a man who once dated his wife. The courtroom scenes have some standout moments, but much of the action is elsewhere, in the Euchre team's detective work. Through all this, Hartstone weaves two themes, of which one, about small towns and their secrets, was well worn in Harper Lee's time and doesn't add much heft here. The other concerns fathers and sons, which Hartstone sustains well through several relevant variations. A generally impressive first outing from a talented writer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

James Euchre, the narrator of film and TV writer Hartstone's impressive debut, has built a successful career as a patent lawyer in Marshall, Tex., which has become the country's leading jurisdiction for intellectual property litigation under the leadership of federal judge Gerald Gardner. When Gardner, Euchre's mentor, is fatally stabbed after a holiday party, the prime suspect is Amir Zawar, a wealthy tech entrepreneur whom Euchre was defending against a claim of copyright infringement before Gardner. After the judge denied Zawar's motion to dismiss the case, the irate Zawar cursed him out and threatened his life. Despite Euchre's lack of experience in criminal defense and close relationship with the murdered man, he's brought onboard as local counsel in the hopes that he'll be more relatable for the jury. Euchre and his colleagues pursue a two-track defense, poking holes in the prosecution's case to establish reasonable doubt while also investigating independently to identify a credible alternate suspect. The surprising twists are rendered plausible by Hartstone's mastery of conveying detailed trial strategies. Scott Turow readers should take a look. Agent: Rachael Dillon Fried, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (June)