My Interview With Authors On The Air

 The wonderfully energetic Ann White and Pam Stack interview yours truly on their on-air podcast, Authors On The Air on  Blog Talk Radio.  Check it out.

Free LAWYERS (At Least For a Little While)

Thanks to everyone who made the recent promotion for THE DEVIL'S RIGHT HAND such a resounding success. So much so, that I'm now offering another e-book, LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY, FREE for the next day or so.

Andy Cole has a pretty good life. Oh, sure, he's got two ex-wives to support and maybe he's a little too fond of good bourbon, but he's got a thriving law practice and he's one of the movers and shakers in the town of Blainesville.

Then local crime boss Voit Fairgreen drops a bag full of cash on Andy's desk. Voit's brother Danny's been charged with murdering a troubled young barmaid, and Voit figures Andy's the kind of inside guy that can get Danny out of the jam.

That's where things start to unravel.

Someone in this town wants the truth buried, and Danny along with it. But Andy's discovering that Danny just may be innocent. And for someone like Andy, an innocent client is the worst thing in the world...

Will Andy Cole, the insider, a guy who's always gone along to get along, risk everything, including his own life and the life of the woman he loves, to get at the truth?

I don't like to pick favorites among my books, but if I did, LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY would be one of mine. I drew on a lot of my own experiences as a small town trial lawyer writing it (although my life's not nearly as interesting as Andy's) and some of the best lines are things I've actually heard. This book also got one of my absolute favorite Amazon reviews of all time, from Steve Malley, a fan from New Zealand:

I'm writing this review from the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake. Long days of shoveling silt and shifting rubble are tiring as hell, but Lawyers Guns and Money still kept me up late, reading first by electric headlamp until the power was restored. I was so engrossed, I barely noticed the aftershocks!

Now THAT is a good review.

Lawyers Guns and Money is free till tomorrow night. Check it out.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OYTU0O

Achtung!

I notice from the reports I get via Amazon that my e-book titles appear to be available now in the German Kindle store (or as they say it, "Kindle-shop"). Note that these are not, however, German translations. Sehr Gut!

Internationally Known Blowhard, Redux: LAWYERS, GUNS & MONEY Down Under

I've got an interview over at the Australian blog Indie eBooks, and there's a short excerpt from Lawyers Guns and Money. Thanks to Nadine for being a gracious host!

Win a Kindle or Nook from One Very Righteous Chick

The supremely cool and outrageously talented Toni McGee Causey gives a shout out to LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY as part of her contest in which one can win a FREE Kindle or Nook over at her blog:

J.D. has a talent for creating characters you feel like you know, deeply, from your own life, and showing you the tensions that they're under that threaten to crack and break them wide open—and like the ladies above, he'll have you turning pages until the wee hours of the morning, because you won't want to put it down until you get to the end.

Head over, enter the contest (I mean, free stuff, amirite?) and show Toni some love. She's not only a kick-ass writer, she's good people as well.

The Worst Thing In The World

Excerpt from Lawyers, Guns and Money:

No place in Blainesville was too far from any other in terms of mileage. But driving to the house where Chloe Gibson had lived and died was like taking a mine-car ride down through the strata of Blaine County society. I drove past the shady downtown streets I’d walked not long before. They were lined with large comfortable homes built during the early part of the 20th century. There was a church on every other block, usually brick with tall but dignified steeples. Then came the old downtown where the mom and pop stores were slowly eroding away, thanks to the big box stores out on the by-pass. After the downtown came the railroad tracks where no trains ran and the weeds grew up between the rails. Across the tracks stood the crumbling textile mill that once provided Blainesville’s wages before the industry crumbled before the brutal reality that there was more profit in paying an Indonesian child a dollar a day than in paying an otherwise unskilled North Carolinian a few dollars an hour. On the other side of the great empty factory were the rows of old mill houses, shabby when they were built and nearly unlivable now. Just past the city-limit sign, I passed the football-field-sized gravel lot and sprawling cinderblock structure that was Voit Fairgreen’s nightclub, the Rancho Deluxe. By the roadside, cheap moveable plastic letters on a lighted sign promised LIVE ROCK & ROLL FRI-SAT COLDEST BEER IN TOWN LADIES NIGHT TUES. It was one of the few businesses in town that was still thriving. Just beyond, separated by a chain link fence and a narrow wooded strip, was the sad little cinderblock house where Chloe Gibson lived. The place where she had taken Danny’s car, because they were both too wasted to walk. The place where someone had killed her.

I drove down the corrugated dirt driveway until I was stopped by a ribbon of yellow crime scene tape. As I sat there and stared at it, a Blainesville police cruiser pulled in behind me. He hit his lights as he pulled to a stop. I started to get out of the car.

“STAY IN YOUR VEHICLE, SIR!” a tinny loudspeaker squawked at me.

“What the hell…” I muttered, but I settled back down into the seat and waited for the cop to come to me. And waited. And waited some more. I turned around and looked back. I couldn’t make out the face of the cop behind the wheel, but he was just sitting there. The crime scene tape in front kept me from going forward and the cop car behind held me in place. I pulled out my cell phone and started dialing. As I did, I saw another car pull in behind the cop car. I saw someone get out and I shut off the cell. I spotted Marty Ellis walking past the patrol car towards me and rolled down the window. He was a short guy, broad, his graying hair in a military-looking brush cut. He looked pissed about something.

“Hey, Marty,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“What are you doing here, Cole?”

“I’m representing Danny Fairgreen,” I said.

“So I heard.”

“So you know what I’m doing here, then,” I said. I started to get out of the car again. He put his hand against the door, almost slamming it shut.

“What the fuck, Marty?” I said.

“Crime scene’s sealed,” he said.

“What, the lab guys aren’t done yet?”

“They’re done.”

“Okay,” I said. “So I guess I need to set up a time…”

“You’re not getting in there.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he said. “It’s sealed.”

“Look, Marty,” I said, “Quit screwing around. This is a murder case.”

“No shit,” he said. “I saw the body.”

“So you know,” I said, speaking slowly and carefully, “That in order to properly defend my client, I or my investigator’s going to need to…”

“You go in there,” Ellis said, “Or if any officer even sees you on this property, you’ll be arrested.”

I was having a harder time controlling my voice. “Arrested for what, exactly?”

“Interfering with an ongoing police investigation. And contempt of court.”

“Contempt?”

“We’ve got a court order, Cole. No one goes in there except law enforcement.”

“And what idiot issued an unconstitutional order like that?”

He actually chuckled. “Judge Atkins.”

“Ah, shit,” I said disgustedly.

“Yep,” Ellis said, and he was smiling this time. “Your old pal.”

The Honorable S. Kenneth Atkins, who I privately called Judge Smirk, was a political appointee through and through, and he knew it. It caused him a considerable amount of professional insecurity, which he overcompensated for by constantly trying to prove he was the smartest guy in the room. If the prosecutor argued for one thing, and the defense attorney argued for another, Smirk would usually give the condescending little smile that earned him his nickname and come up with a third thing, which nine times out of ten made no damn sense at all.

There was this to be said in Smirk’s defense: he didn’t play favorites. He was a complete asshole to everyone: prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement officers, even courtroom clerks. The only reason someone so universally despised stayed in an elected position was that the straight-ticket-voting public rarely paid any attention to judicial elections, and this was a county that would elect Bozo the Clown if he ran on the Republican ticket. A couple of people had tried to mount challenges for Smirk’s seat. One had abruptly withdrawn for “personal reasons” a month before election day, and the other had been buried at the polls. No one had tried since. So there he stayed, a thorn eternally looking for a side.

“You got a problem with this,” Ellis said, “Take it up with Judge Atkins.”

“Thanks,” I said, defeated. “I’ll do that.”

“Any time,” he said. He turned to walk away.

“What the hell’s going on here, Marty?” I called after him. “This isn’t the way things are done, and you know it.”

He turned back. “What I know is that your client gutted that girl. From the position of the body and the preliminary blood spatter reports, he slashed her open in the kitchen. Then he went over and sat down in the chair while she crawled across the floor. She died at his feet while he sat there and watched.

Jesus. If that was the story they were spinning around this one, it really was going to get ugly. “What was the weapon?”

“Some kind of large bladed knife.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Some kind of…you mean you don’t have the weapon?”

He realized he’d said too much. He shut his mouth so fast I’m surprised I didn’t hear a snap. “Marty,” I went on, “My client was too wasted to remember what he was doing. I’m not even sure how he got to the house.”

“If you’re trying for some kind of intoxication defense, counselor,” Ellis said, “well...good luck with that.”

“Intoxication, hell,” I said. “Are you telling me the State is going to try to argue that a guy as fried as Danny Fairgreen not only managed to kill the girl, but that he hid the weapon so well a police search couldn’t find it before he passed out?”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Ellis said, his face darkening with blood, “other than to get the hell out of here.” He turned and strode angrily back to his car. I sat and watched as he backed out and drove away. The patrolman sat there for a minute, watching me behind his shades, then backed out slowly. He waited on the road, his lights still flashing, as I backed out. He killed his lights, but followed me all the way back into town. Only when I pulled up outside the office did he drive away.

Back at the office, I stopped and knocked softly on Chuck’s door.

“Come in,” he said.

The office was mostly dark except for the desk lamp, illuminating the binder open on his desk. The rest of the desk was cluttered with files and papers and a laptop computer. Chuck’s tie was half undone and his hair was mussed as if he’d been running his hands through it. His face fell as he saw me. He probably thought I was coming to lay another load of work on him.

“You asked if Danny actually did it," I said. "I'm beginning to think he may not have."

He looked baffled. “Isn't that a good thing?”

"No," I said, "It's a terrible thing.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Look, Chuck,” I said. “If you have a client you know is guilty, you do your job by making the State prove it. You make sure the cops and the prosecutors do their job right, because if you don't, sure as hell, they will start getting sloppy about it and cutting corners, and then we're all fucked. But when a guy you know did it goes off to jail, and most of them do, all you have to ask is 'did I do my job and make everyone else do theirs?' If the answer is 'yes', then you can sleep easy. But a guy you know is innocent but who might get convicted anyway...that's not a good thing, Chuck. An innocent client is the worst fucking thing in the world. When you say your prayers tonight, be sure to thank God that it doesn't happen often." I closed the door before he could answer.

Recommendations Don't Come Much Higher Than This

Okay, I swear 'm not going to post every reader review. But I do have to share this one, from Steve Malley in earthquake ravaged New Zealand:

I'm writing this review from the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake. Long days of shoveling silt and shifting rubble are tiring as hell, but Lawyers Guns and Money still kept me up late, reading first by electric headlamp until the power was restored. I was so engrossed, I barely noticed the aftershocks!

Now THAT is a damn REVIEW.

God bless you, Steve, and good luck to you and all the folks down your way. I'm sending all the positive energy I can along with my thanks (and a copy of BREAKING COVER).

Who Are You, First Reviewer?

First customer review for LAWYERS GUNS AND MONEY is from the mysterious "redsoxfanworcester" at B & N:

Posted February 25, 2011, 11:44 PM EST: JD Rhoades has a real gift for creating characters with such depth that they seem to live in your parish, and this book is no exception. This gift is particularly powerful because he also has an ability to evoke palpable tension and ethical crises that are based in real life. If you like your thrillers not only well written, but also not straining your suspension of disbelief, I urge you to check out JD Rhoades and "Lawyers, Guns, and Money."

As promised, send me your snail-mail address to dustyr@nc.rr.com and I'll send you a hardcover of BREAKING COVER.

And thanks!

Still got a prize available for the first Amazon review...

Tell You What, Let's Make a Deal....

First person to post a review of LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY on Amazon or B & N gets a free hardcover copy of my last print novel, BREAKING COVER. Doesn't even have to be a good review, although I assume if you don't like LG& M you won't want BC. Be sure to message or e-mail me your snail mail address....

Lawyers, Guns and Money NOW FOR THE NOOK!

Lawyers, Guns and Money is now live at BN.com for all you Nookies. (Nookites? Nookers?) Coming soon for the iPad!

Get LAWYERS GUNS AND MONEY Now!

Lawyers, Guns and Money for Kindle

And for other formats (new ones being added)

Andy Cole, small town criminal lawyer and general go-along guy, has built a successful practice defending criminal offenders - and making sure he is paid in advance. But this easy, lucrative professional life changes forever when Danny Fairgreen, the white sheep of the notorious Fairgreen clan, is arrested for murdering a barmaid, and Andy agrees to represent him--for a price.

But an unknown someone wants Danny convicted -- bad -- and starts putting the screws to Andy. At first, the pressure is subtle, but it grows ever more ever more intense until Andy is faced with an unspeakable choice: Go along once again and send an innocent man to death row, or step up to the plate and risk losing everything--including his own life and the life of the woman he loves.

BEHOLD!

The new cover for my upcoming e-book, LAWYERS GUNS AND MONEY!

Thanks to Jeroen ten Berge for his patience as we worked this one up. The book itself should be live in a couple of days on Amazon (for Kindle) and Smashwords (for other e-readers)