To mark the 20th anniversary of its hardcover publication, To Speak for the Dead, Paul Levine's debut legal thriller, is now available as an e-book, with all proceeds going to charity.
The novel introduced Jake Lassiter, the linebacker-turned-lawyer, who is as likely to punch out a witness as cross-examine him. In To Speak for the Dead, Lassiter defends a surgeon accused of malpractice after his patient dies during routine surgery. When evidence is uncovered that the surgeon was obsessed with his patient's wife, Lassiter suspects his client is innocent of malpractice...but guilty of murder.
To Speak for the Dead was translated into 18 languages and adapted into an NBC World Premiere Movie in 1995. All royalties from the e-book edition will go to the Four Diamonds Fund, which supports cancer treatment and research at Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital.
"I've had three dear friends lose a child or a spouse to cancer in the last few years," Levine says. "This is a cause close to my heart."
Seven Lassiter novels were published in the 1990's. Since then, Levine has written two stand-alone thrillers including last year's Illegal, plus the four-book Solomon vs. Lord series. Additionally, he wrote 20 episodes of the CBS military drama JAG, and co-created the Supreme Court show First Monday, starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna.
"If not for To Speak for the Dead," I'd still be handling 8 a.m. motion calendars in the Miami-Dade Courthouse," says Levine, a former trial lawyer. After signing his initial two-book contract with Bantam in 1988, Levine quit the practice of law and began writing full time.
"I'd read Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent and Carl Hiaasen's Tourist Season, plus all of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books," Levine says, from his Studio City, CA hillside home. "I was influenced by their rich characters and powerful themes, and in Carl's case, his subversive humor. Those books convinced me I wanted to be a writer."
Jake Lassiter will return in an original hardcover next year with the publication of Last Chance Lassiter.
More information at http://www.paul-levine.com
