(Defense attorney Paul Madriani was on the rise with the C...)
Defense attorney Paul Madriani was on the rise with the California law firm of Potter, Skarpellos - until a short-lived affair with Potter's wife, Talia, cost him his job. A year later, when Talia is accused of Potter’s murder Paul is thrust back into the big time - and he soon uncovers secrets that may end his career... and his life.
(Defense attorney Paul Madriani is mired in a complex web ...)
Defense attorney Paul Madriani is mired in a complex web of intrigue and murder when the sister of his late wife, embroiled in a bitter custody battle with her former husband, becomes the prime suspect in the murder of her ex-husband and his new young wife.
(When Judge Armando Acosta is charged with soliciting a pr...)
When Judge Armando Acosta is charged with soliciting a prostitute, attorney Paul Madriani is less than sympathetic. Nevertheless, Madriani is forced to defend his old nemesis. And when the policewoman who snared Acosta is brutally murdered, Madriani wonders if the judge is also the executioner.
(Gable Cooper has penned a novel to kill for. Six million ...)
Gable Cooper has penned a novel to kill for. Six million dollars in book and film rights are looming just off the table for this unknown author. But there is a problem: Gable Cooper doesn't exist. Abby Chandlis is an attorney turned novelist and the creator of Gable Cooper. In an age when glamour, not grammar, is often the secret to selling books, Abby has an intriguing plan to keep her writing career alive: find a charismatic male face to pose as the phantom author for the knock-dead thriller she has written. Jack Jermaine is a man with dangerous good looks and a shadowy past. Trained by the military to kill, his obsession is to pen a blockbuster book.
(Joss has no significant clients other than a group of com...)
Joss has no significant clients other than a group of commercial fisherman suffering from a strange and serious illness, a condition that doctors cannot diagnose, and which Joss believes has an industrial cause. Then into her office comes Dean Belden, a well-heeled client in search of a lawyer to help him set up a business in the islands. Within days Belden is subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury. Less than an hour after testifying, and before Joss can discover what happened in the secrecy of the grand jury room, Belden dies in a fiery explosion of his float plane on Seattle's Lake Union.
(Now Martini delivers one of Paul Madriani’s most challeng...)
Now Martini delivers one of Paul Madriani’s most challenging cases in The Attorney: where a drug-addicted mother is pitted against her daughter’s newly rich grandfather in a contentious custody case that leads to criminal accusations - and ultimately murder.
(Paul Madriani has ample reason to suspect he's representi...)
Paul Madriani has ample reason to suspect he's representing a guilty man. Dr. David Crone, a respected medical researcher and principal in mapping the human genome, is charged with the murder of a young colleague: twenty-six-year-old Kalista Jordan, an African-American research physician whose body washed up on a beach in San Diego Bay. Forensic evidence links her murder with the material in Crone's garage.
(The Arraignment takes Madriani into uncharted territory -...)
The Arraignment takes Madriani into uncharted territory - into the minds of men whose murderous greed knows no bounds... and onto the front lines of the South American drug war.
(A beautiful businesswoman, the founder of a high-tech sof...)
A beautiful businesswoman, the founder of a high-tech software company catering to the military, is found dead, two tightly grouped bullet wounds to her ahead - a “double tap,” the trademark of highly skilled assassins. Paul Madriani takes the case of the man accused of the crime: a career soldier who refuses to explain the mysterious gaps in his military résumé. Faced with an uncooperative client, Madriani begins a dangerous search for the truth - in the soldier's shadowy past, in the victim's deadly secrets...
(Terry Scarborough is a legal scholar and provocateur who ...)
Terry Scarborough is a legal scholar and provocateur who craves headline-making celebrity, but with his latest book, he may have gone too far. In it, he resurrects forgotten language in the United States Constitution - and hints at a missing letter of Thomas Jefferson's - that threatens to divide the nation. Then, during a publicity tour, Scarborough is brutally murdered in a San Diego hotel room, and a young man with dark connections is charged. What looks like an open-and-shut case to most people doesn't to defense attorney Paul Madriani. He believes that there is much more to the case and that the defendant is a pawn caught in the middle, being scapegoated by circumstance.
(Defense attorney Paul Madriani is caught in a web of dece...)
Defense attorney Paul Madriani is caught in a web of deceit and murder involving Cold War secrets, a rare coin dealer who once worked for the CIA, and a furious assassin in Guardian of Lies, the most entertaining novel yet in the New York Times bestselling series.
(In Trader of Secrets, the crusading lawyer is on the trai...)
In Trader of Secrets, the crusading lawyer is on the trail of dangerous criminals who are trying to steal state-of-the-art weapons technology with nothing less than the future of America at stake.
(One of the most successful lawyers in the country, Olinda...)
One of the most successful lawyers in the country, Olinda Serna is a master at managing money as well as her influential clients. After years of fierce combat in the political trenches, Serna knows all the dirty secrets, where the bodies are buried, and how deeply they are stacked. When she’s killed in a roadside crash in the high desert of Southern California, powerful heads in Washington begin to panic, worried that their secrets may not be safe anymore. Alex Ives, a friend of Paul Madriani’s daughter, is accused of vehicular manslaughter in Serna’s death.
(Navy SEALs are the military's elite - highly trained, dea...)
Navy SEALs are the military's elite - highly trained, deadly, and sworn to secrecy about the details of their dangerous and confidential missions. So when one of the men goes public about a high-profile assassination abroad, all of his comrades are thrown into peril. In this riveting novella, attorney Paul Madriani comes to the aid of a Navy SEAL who is pursued by his own government and facing possible prosecution for disclosures he says were made by others. When the soldier disappears, Paul finds himself ensnared in a deadly game of intrigue that forces him to track the man down before it is too late.
(Defending a client accused of killing her father, attorne...)
Defending a client accused of killing her father, attorney Paul Madriani is drawn into a treacherous conspiracy dating to World War II in this enthralling installment in the New York Times bestselling series. Paul Madriani and Harry Hinds have a new client: Emma Brauer, a woman accused in the “mercy killing” of her aged father, Robert Brauer. Insisting she’s innocent, Emma tells Paul about a package sent to her father shortly before he entered the hospital. Bequeathed to him by a member of his unit from World War II, the box contains a key and a slip of paper.
(Defending a medical researcher accused of murdering a col...)
Defending a medical researcher accused of murdering a colleague raises one of the most difficult ethical questions attorney Paul Madriani has ever faced: how far should science go to find a cure for our most life-threatening diseases? When medical researcher Michael Givens is charged with the murder of a colleague he turns to Paul Madriani and Harry Hinds to defend him. The murder victim, a noted chemist, and the genetic specialist was on the cusp of one of the great medical discoveries of history, a cure for cancer - a genetic silver bullet. Prosecutors are convinced that Givens coldly planned and carried out the murder and that the motive was professional jealousy.
Steve Martini is an American writer and novelist who writes in the genre of legal novels. Steve is the New York Times best-selling author of over 15 novels, 12 of them in his Paul Madriani series. His latest book, Trader of Secrets, is the third in his “Trilogy of Terror.”
Background
Ethnicity:
Martini is part of a large extended Italian-American family, some of which reach back four generations in California.
Steve Martini was born on February 28, 1946, in San Francisco, and grew up in the Bay Area and Southern California. Martini’s parents moved to Los Angeles County, California in 1956. His father, Ernest Martini, was a rancher, managing and owning farms throughout California during his lifetime. His mother, Rita, was a housewife and homemaker, though in later years she worked extensively in the local library in San Gabriel, California.
Education
Martini graduated from San Gabriel Mission Grammar School, San Gabriel High School, and Pasadena City College before transferring to the University of California at Santa Cruz where he graduated in 1968 with a degree in Government (Political Science). In 1974 he earned his law degree from the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law.
Steve Martini worked as a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles and as a correspondent at the California State Capitol in Sacramento, specializing in legal issues. In 1974 he entered private law practice in California where he appeared in both state and federal courts. During his law career, he worked as a legislative representative for the State Bar of California, served as special counsel to the California Victims of Violent Crimes Program, and was an administrative law judge and supervising hearing officer.
In 1984, Martini turned his talents to fiction. Compelling Evidence, the novel that introduced attorney Paul Madriani, was published by Putnam in 1992. A national bestseller, that novel earned Martini a critical and popular following.
His first attempt at a novel, The Simeon Chamber, was represented by an agent and sold to the New York publisher D.I. Fine within two weeks of its submission. It was published in 1987. Compelling Evidence, his second novel, introduced his series character, attorney Paul Madriani, and was published by G.P. Putnam & Sons. A national bestseller, the novel earned Martini a critical and popular following. It was followed quickly by New York Times bestsellers Prime Witness, Undue Influence, The Judge, and The Attorney, each featuring the series character Madriani and his contrarian and irrepressible law partner, Harry Hinds.
The List, published in 1997, a novel and thriller about the commercial book publishing industry, was the first Martini novel to depart from the series characters since the author reached the best sellers list. Critical Mass, his next novel published in 1998, continued the departure from the courtroom as well as the Madriani series, though it involved a lawyer protagonist and was well within the legal-thriller genre. Critical Mass addressed issues of terrorism and the threat from weapons of mass destruction two years before the events of 9/11. It was a topic to which Martini would return in later years.
Other novels by Martini include The Jury, The Arraignment, Double Tap, Shadow of Power, Guardian of Lies, The Rule of Nine, and Trader of Secrets.
Quotations:
"My day is somewhat unstructured, but I usually try to start writing as early as possible. I find that to be most productive. To be successful I usually try to eliminate as many distractions as possible. When I am involved in a manuscript I will usually spend a minimum of four to five hours a day writing. When approaching a deadline I usually work for more extended periods, at times as long as eight or ten hours. I compose at a computer screen and generally rewrite as I go. Each day as I begin I usually go back over the previous day's work, polish and rewrite and then move on. I do not write a complete draft and then revise. When I reach the end of a manuscript it has usually been rewritten anywhere from eight to ten times from start to finish. At that point it should require only a few minor adjustments before sending it off to my publisher. Based on past experience I do not require heavy editing."
Personality
Steve Martini likes to travel, so he spends much of his time in Latin America and Southeast Asia where he writes, travels, and acquires research and color for future works.
Quotes from others about the person
Superstar crime novelist Linda Fairstein says: “Take it from a prosecutor - Steve Martini has created one of the most charismatic defense attorneys in thriller fiction,” referring to Martini’s fearless yet very human series protagonist, defense attorney Paul Madriani.
Interests
traveling
Connections
Steve Martini was married to Wanda Leah Martini, now Leah Martini-Puhlman. They have one daughter.