Charley Sloan

Detroit lawyer Charley Sloan has been around the block once or twice. Down for the count, drinking heavily, a three-time loser in the marriage wars, Charley repairs his tattered career and gets back in the game. Heading his rogues' gallery of clients is the infamous, twisted angel of mercy, Doctor Death, whose patients have a strange habit of dying under very peculiar circumstances. But now, Charley steps into a case with the opportunity to do some good. The high stakes include a literal matter of life and death. And, as he quickly discovers, they also include the sinister stench of corruption that reaches to the highest levels of jurisprudence-including Charley Sloan's respected mentor. Suddenly, a rock and a hard place never looked so good.

The death of innocence In a rural area outside of Detroit, bodies are being found in the snow. One after another. Neatly washed, wrapped in plastic, methodically laid out like sleeping angels. And very, very young. The birth of evil Forty-miles away and at the other end of the world, an honest cop, the deputy chief of police, has been framed for a corruption charge. In a world of big-city politics, he wants ace lawyer Charley Sloan to get him off. The only hope Pulled into the two very different cases, Charley faces the heat of a perplexing serial murder investigation and the heavey hitters of the Motor City's inner circle. Interviewing witnesses, putting together clues, Charley Sloan, a man who has been at the bottom and at the top, is about to uncover the explosive difference between true innocence-and the most dangerous guilt of all... The Judgement

In William J. Coughlin's The Court, the fourth Charley Sloan Courtroom Thriller, nine Supreme Court judges will soon decide four history-making cases. Eight of them will split along party lines four to four. The ninth judge, holding the swing vote, will tip the scales of justice. He's a good man, a fine man, and, unknown to nearly everyone, a dying man-barely kept alive by machines in a very private hospital. High-powered Washington attorney Jerry Green is one of the privileged few who discovers American justice rides on the rise and fall of a respirator. Now he's been called by the President himself to do something about it. It's a hunt for truth that will arouse his darkest suspicions...force him to make a shocking choice...and save the legitimacy of American justice. Or shatter it forever...

Okay, so your client is a liar. Does that make him a murderer? In the dark hours of morning, Charley Sloan arrives at the palatial home of Miles Dane, celebrated novelist from the Detroit suburb of Pickeral Point, to find Dane's wife murdered in their bed. Dane tells Charley he was downstairs working. Heard nothing, saw nothing. The police arrive. Dane tells his story again. Only, this time there's a mysterious intruder fleeing down the hallway, with Dane in pursuit. Miles Dane became a famous writer because he had a wild and violent imagination. But now that imagination seems to be getting him in trouble. The more he talks to the police, the crazier his story sounds. Is he making things up because that's just what he does? Or is it because he has something to hide? Once the cops uncover physical evidence linking Dane to the crime, they're sure they know the answer. Dane is charged with murder. Charley Sloan has his work cut out for him. How do you protect and represent a client who seems to be his own worst enemy? Miles Dane's wild thoughts continue to dog him as the evidence rolls in. The police soon suspect that he had planned this crime many years ago. And made the mistake of writing it all down. In exact detail. Was it a plan of action or just another of Miles Dane's strange fantasies? At first Charley can't help but think that Miles killed his wife. But as he begins conducting his own investigation into the case, Charley comes to believe that Miles his client has been framed. And that the real killer is using Dane's own bizarre imagination against him. But if that's true, why doesn't Dane speak up? Charley thinks he knows why. Dane has something to hide. Something from his past. Something shameful. Charley understands shame. A recovering alcoholic with a string of wrecked marriages behind him, he has his own dark past. Charley has long been separated from his daughter Lisa, a law student and recovering alcoholic, who now joins the hard-pressed legal team. Will the case bring father and daughter together or drive them apart? The trial begins and still it's unclear where Miles Dane's wild imaginings stop and reality begins. Or whether he is committing the ultimate sacrifice in order to atone for something he did long ago. Only in the crucible of the final, fevered moments of trial will Charley finally put the pieces together. And reveal the stunning truth.