Title:	The #1 Lawyer
	Author:	James Patterson, Nancy Allen
	Published:	March 18, 2024, Little Brown & Company
	No. of Pages:	427
	Cover Price:	$15.00 Hardcover, $22.31 Paperback, $14.99 Kindle

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Stafford Lee Penney is an amazing lawyer in Biloxi, Mississippi, and he gets a client who is most likely guilty, off on a murder charge in The #1 Lawyer , a thriller with James Patterson’s name on it with co-writer Nancy Allen. Anything James Patterson is instantly a best seller, but that doesn’t mean the novels are well-written or even good. Apparently Nancy Allen knows her stuff, because this is one of the best written James Patterson novels out there. The writing style is not James Patterson, and will appeal to most thriller aficionados rather than just the lowest common denominator - tabloid reader. In this excellent novel, Stafford Lee’s wife is murdered shortly after the trial and the police (always incompetent) think it’s related to the trial and was committed by a disgruntled relative of the murder victim. His wife was with a lover, who was also murdered, since he was presumed to be Stafford Lee. Stafford Lee takes his wife’s death hard, starts drinking, and ends up on rehab. After rehab, his client’s wife is murdered and he becomes the prime suspect.

Allen has done an excellent job of developing the characters in this novel, and they are definitely believable, especially by those who are familiar with Biloxi, the surrounding areas and the culture there. The story has twists and turns that keep readers on the edge, and there are enough suspects to keep them thinking. This novel is hard to put down. It captures some of the racism that is prevalent even today in the south, and the dénouement is surprising. Unlike Patterson, Allen has obviously done her research – there are no blatant issues that are false or misleading and also unlike many of Patterson’s novels, there are no parts of the plot that are left dangling.

All told, readers who pick up this novel will want to read everything written by Nancy Allen.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.