Partners

The pristine blue-chip law firm of Stafford, Parrish, and MacAllister stuns the nation by agreeing to step down from its ivory tower and litigate a shocking and sensational plaintiff’s environmental class action. For ambitious attorney Rachel Cannon, this is her make-or-break chance to earn the firm's first female partnership. For S.P.&M.'s best and brightest litigator, Kevin Stone, it is the greatest trial challenge of his career. For both, it quickly becomes the ultimate test of their loyalties, ethics, courage, and deepest desires. For suddenly the high profile, multimillion-dollar trial explodes into a scandalous tumult of greed, power, and shocking multiple murders. With the firm’s survival in doubt, the goal is no longer about justice, it's about winning--at any cost. As the S.P.&M. top brass plan their courtroom strategy, and streetwise detective Dan Conti tracks a killer, Rachel becomes a pawn in a ruthless game...trapped with Kevin in a tightening web of intrigue, danger, and complicity, and struggling with a nightmare case that could not only shatter Rachel's dreams of love, but destroy her golden career . . . and maybe her life.

It is one of the most elite of the prestigious Montgomery Street firms. Stafford, Parrish, and MacAllister, a blue-chip law firm, has never taken on any but the wealthiest corporate clients, the most pristine of cases. No firm is more “establishment”.” And no one - not even its partners - suspects that staid, blue-blooded SP&M stands on the brink of financial ruin. Only one man, Austin Barrington - senior managing partner, himself a scion of old society - know that his beloved firm is about to go under. And it is Barrington’s bold plan to save the firm by litigating the most sensational case in the partnership’s history - a multiple plaintiff suit against a powerful corporation in which the legal fees could run to the millions - that sets in motion the shocking events of Partners. For, as the headline-making case moves toward trial, it becomes clear that Barrington will stop at nothing to win - and that those around him will soon be drawn into an ever-tightening web of complicity. KEVIN STONE - The best and brightest litigator in the firm, with an unbroken string of victories behind him, he finds his expertise - and ethics - strained to the breaking point by the demanding new case and by his growing attraction for his beautiful young colleague, Rachel Cannon. RACHEL CANNON - Intelligent, ambitious, driven by secrets she believes she has locked securely away, she is determined to become SP&M’s first female partner. Tapped to assist Stone and Barrington, she knows this case can make or break her career. What she doesn’t know is how profoundly it will test her loyalties - and her deepest desires. DAN CONTI - A life spent on the streets has sharpened the instincts of this hotheaded homicide detective - and all his experience and intuition tell him that the violent death of a plaintiff in this case was not the suicide it seems to be. But Conti, the loner, the outsider, has begun to care for Rachel Canon. And as he moves closer to a killer, he realizes his investigation might well cost Rachel the partnership she so desires . . . and maybe her life. Here, in a novel where topics torn from today’s headlines electrify virtually every page, is a compelling story that is more than sheer entertainment. For Partners is also about sexual discrimination in the law, intrigue in the courtroom, life behind the walls of a major San Francisco law firm, and the relentless quest by talented young lawyers to grab the golden ring of partnership - before someone else snatches it first.

After serving as a U.S. Air Force pilot, John Martel studied creative writing at the University of California at Berkeley, then obtained a law degree at U.C.'s Boalt Hall. He soon became a named partner in the now-100 lawyer firm of Farella, Braun & Martel in San Francisco and is a veteran of more than one hundred trials to conclusion with only four losses. He has been hailed by the National Law Journal as one of the top ten trial lawyers in America and brings an insight and stunning realism to his four novels unsurpassed by any other writers of legal fiction. His best-selling debut suspense novel, Partners, spent 15 weeks on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list in 1988 and drew rave reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Review, and Booklist. His third novel, The Alternate, also spent months on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list in hardcover in 1999 and reached #17 on The New York Times paperback bestseller list in 2000. John’s new novel will be released in the Fall of 2012 and has garnered advance raves. John is a modern renaissance man. While writing Conflicts of Interest, he took time off to become the1997 National Masters Champion in the high hurdles, running the fastest time in the world that year. In his "spare time," John, a singer/songwriter with nearly one hundred compositions, has performed his original country-rock songs under the pseudonym "Joe Silverhound" at numerous Bay Area clubs and such venues as the Troubadour in Los Angeles and the Palomino Club in North Hollywood.