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Lean, speedy and packing a wallop of a plot twist was Publishers Weekly's verdict of Steve Martini's The Jury. Now Martini crafts yet another legal nail-biter featuring perennial favorite attorney Paul Madriani.

After a lawyer friend is killed along with his client in a hail of gunfire outside the federal courthouse in San Diego, Madriani takes on another client who he believes is involved at the edges of the double murder. He takes the case not to defend the man, but to find out who killed his friend and why. Madriani is tortured by questions of conflict, his duty to a client who may have killed is friend, and the need to know the truth, wondering whether he himself had been marked for death only to have a friend die in his place. Soon he is drawn into a vortex of crime that spans the Americas.

As he searches for the killer, Madriani rides the crest of a dangerous wave of international drug deals and people who murder for money. Suddenly he realizes it is not heroin or cocaine that resulted in the murder of his friend, but a priceless piece of pre-Columbian art - something so dazzling in the information it holds as to be one of the treasures of the ages.

In a quest that takes Madriani from California to Mexico and the Guatemalan border, he discovers that while the motive to kill may be driven by distant, exotic, and ancient artifacts, the killer, like a serpent, lies much closer at hand.

Steve Martini was born in San Francisco and grew up in Southern California. An honors graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz, he worked as a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles and as a correspondent at the California State Capitol in Sacramento, specializing in legal issues. After obtaining his law degree, he appeared in state and federal courts; he also served as special counsel to the California Victims of Violent Crime Program. His first novel, Compelling Evidence, was published in 1992 and became a bestseller. He has gone on to write a number of other books, including The Trader of Secrets, Guardian of Lies, The List, The Judge, and Prime Witness, among others. He currently resides in the Pacific Northwest.

Erik Bergmann is a winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award. He is the narrator of the Area 51 and Justice League audiobook series, as well as the voice of Fred on the companion audiobook for the Warner Bros. feature film Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. He has also dabbled in television, making appearances on Saturday Night Live and doing voice-over work for Random! Cartoons.