penalty if only 10 jurors vote for it. I don’t know to what extent, if any, these inaccurate assumptions reflect a lack of familiarity with the American criminal justice system, a desire to exaggerate or misstate current legal and political reality to advance the author’s own political agenda, or simply a decision to abandon reality to make the protagonist’s task that much more difficult and dangerous. I do know that the individual reader’s reaction to The Devil’s Advocate may depend on their reaction to the author’s errors and exaggerations.

In The Devil’s Advocate, the author’s series hero, Eddie Flynn, is a New York attorney who used to be a con artist. The character’s past is never explained in this book (I haven’t read any earlier volumes in the series). Still, it comes in handy on a couple of occasions, including one in which he uses misdirection to convince a clerk that a stack of bail money he posts contains more money than it actually does. Flynn goes to Alabama at the behest of a shadowy federal government operative to defend a young black man accused of murder. The defendant and the white female victim both worked at the same bar. One night, the victim vanished after work, and her body was found in the woods near the bar the next day.

The case seems airtight. The defendant signed a confession saying that he made advances towards the victim that night, and when she rejected him, he killed her. He also allegedly made a second, similar confession to his cellmate a few days later. Finally, skin and blood scrapings under the victim’s fingernails matched the defendant’s DNA. The defendant’s first lawyer, a local defense attorney, disappeared, taking his case files with him. (His murdered body turns up a few days after Flynn arrives in town.) What makes the case against the defendant especially strong is the fact that the local District Attorney has obtained more death penalty sentences than any other prosecutor in the country and has never lost a capital case.

This plot synopsis may seem routine, if a bit more hopeless for the defendant than most, to readers familiar with legal thrillers. However, the author adds two major story elements that make this story unique in my experience. First, the District Attorney isn’t a mere hard-nosed prosecutorial zealot, as this character is often portrayed. He’s an actual psychopath who enjoys killing people through the criminal justice system, regardless of their guilt. He goes far beyond the usual prosecutorial overreach found in similar books, to the extent of doctoring evidence, intimidating individual jurors, and committing violent acts, all to gain a conviction in this case. However, the District Attorney isn’t the only master villain in The Devil’s Advocate. It’s no spoiler to reveal that the defendant here is innocent. The author reveals the killer’s identity fairly early in the book. The murder is one part of an intricate conspiracy hatched by a white supremacist secret society whose members include several local law officers. Their leader is a shadowy character the author refers to as the “Pastor” for most of the book before revealing his identity in the final few pages.

Most authors of legal thrillers I’ve read strive to keep their plots within the bounds of plausibility. They leave readers with the sense that a significant miscarriage of justice could occur in the story, except for the protagonist’s courtroom skills. I doubt many readers will have a similar feeling while reading The Devil’s Advocate. The combination of two highly improbable master villains with similar goals and seemingly unlimited capabilities will be too much for many readers to accept. I certainly didn’t. The book also paints a very unflattering portrait of racism in present-day Alabama. (This book was first published in England in 2021 and in the United States in 2025.) The author notes in an afterword that one of his inspirations for writing this book was To Kill a Mockingbird, a book one of the book’s important characters is actually reading on the eve of the trial. However, To Kill a Mockingbird was written in 1960 and depicts events in Alabama in the 1930s. Using it as the basis for a supposedly realistic portrayal of modern race relations in the state is like using Shakespeare’s Richard III as the basis for a portrayal of the modern British monarchy. Racism exists among the small-town populace, but it’s not as open, widespread, and blatant as it’s portrayed in The Devil’s Advocate. I understand those who may summarily reject The Devil’s Advocate for its outlandish villainous combination.

Instead, I tried to view the villains and setup in The Devil’s Advocate the way I would look at a James Bond or similar thriller. Even as a child, I knew no one would ever try to steal all the gold from Fort Knox, but I still enjoyed reading Goldfinger. Mostly, I could accept the characters and events in “The Devil’s Advocate” for the sake of the story. When I did so, I found the novel to be quite entertaining. Eddie Flynn has a colorful supporting cast, including his law partner and some talented investigators who help him. He also proves quite resourceful himself, as when he intentionally gets arrested to gain access to his client (one of many situations portrayed in the book that would never happen in real life). Flynn’s investigators get involved in some traditional thriller action sequences with the secret society, and these scenes are well-written and suspenseful. Most importantly for genre fans, the courtroom scenes are well-written and suspenseful, as Flynn and his law partner systematically dismantle the prosecution’s case.

However, the villains’ actions and antics eventually became so troublesome and implausible that they distracted from my enjoyment of the book. The author writes a substantial portion of the book from the points of view of the District Attorney and the Pastor, and I found their thought processes occasionally too overwrought and disturbing. The author often did this to tease readers by revealing just enough about the secret society’s master plan to make readers eager to learn more. This strategy is effective, but the author could have accomplished his goal less annoyingly by scaling back the glimpses into the villains’ thought processes.

As I approached the end of The Devil’s Advocate, I was inclined to give the book an average rating and no recommendation. I found the “scales of justice” for the novel to be balanced, with the book’s entertainment value equal to its annoyance value. I believe, however, that the conclusion of a book is the most important part because it influences a reader’s opinion much more than the earlier sections do. Here, the author saves the surprise revelation of the Pastor’s identity for the end, and I confess I was completely fooled and impressed here. I therefore set The Devil’s Advocate aside with a pleasurable feeling, despite my misgivings. For that reason, I’m giving the book a three-star rating and a mild recommendation. However, I realize some readers may deliver a harsher verdict.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.