Author: Ed Rucker

Nothing gets criminal defense attorney, Bobby Earl's blood going more than a case with high stakes. In Ed Ruckner's Justice Makes a Killing: A Bobby Earl Novel, it is all or nothing when his client, Kathleen Carlson, a prominent attorney with a prestigious Los Angeles law firm, is accused of killing a guard at a private prison in Haywood, California.

According to Carlson, she was framed by the prison guards union. She informs Earl that she is the spokesperson for Proposition 52, the SOS Initiative which is to ban the use of private prisons to house state inmates and employ the money it saves into schools. The main opponent of the bill is the guards union as the state requires private prisons only to hire union guards. If these private prisons were eliminated, there would be a loss of thousands of jobs as well as their union fees.

Carlson had been visiting an inmate at the prison, Adam Hartman, a well respected and successful doctor, who was convicted of attempting to murder his wife's lover. Hartman had contacted Carlson and told her he had important information that could help her in her campaign against private prisons. Over several weeks, she had corresponded with him and visited him several times. Hartman was willing to divulge this information to Carlson provided she would help him in securing a parole date and reinstating his medical license.

Carlson found herself behind bars as a result of the murder of a correction officer, Travis Miller, while on duty. It was alleged by the prosecution that Miller was murdered by Hartman as he was planning to escape from prison. The prosecution accused Carlson of orchestrating the escape, that she had smuggled a gun into the jail and secretly gave it to Hartman while visiting him. It was further alleged that Hartman had taken unarmed officer Miller hostage and had intended to force him to take him to the prison's vehicle yard and then drive him out of prison. Carlson would meet up with him later and help him sneak out of the country, where she would later join him.

We all know the old adage, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” and in this instance, it seems that something had happened, according to the prosecution. Hartman was confronted by an alert correction officer, Clyde Rattner, and as Miller was no longer of use to Hartman, he had shot him. Rattner jumped Hartman, they grappled over the gun, and in the struggle, Hartman was killed. Later on in the day, Carlson was arrested. Unfortunately for Carlson, there were all kinds of circumstantial evidence that would back up the prosecution's case including a possible love relationship between her and Hartman, the discovery of gun powder residue on her hands from test firing the gun before slipping it to Hartman, and a bullet cartridge that was found in her car.

Most of us know that prosecutors and defense attorneys can both use the same foundation of factual events and come up with two completely different stories. It is now Bobby Earl's task to come up with a strategy that would poke holes in the prosecution's case. How did his client smuggle the gun into the prison, how did she have gunshot residue on her hands and a host of several other facts that came to light while doing some background research as to who really profited from the Haywood prison. You will be surprised as to what he digs up that goes a long way in making his theory of the case that will be based on Carlson's story as well as other provable facts.

Fans of Ed Rucker will welcome this latest tome in his Bobby Earl Novels. Once again, Rucker employs his knowledge from his many years as a criminal defense attorney as he unspools quite a plot with all of the bells and whistles that we would expect in a well-crafted mystery novel. Here we have a large cast of characters and many red herrings thrown in that keep readers guessing. When we have two different perspectives, the yarn becomes multilayered while the tension builds.