5 stars out of 5
This is the third book I've read in the author's series featuring Tennessee lawyer Joe Dillard, and I continue to be amazed at how much I'm enjoying them. This is the best so far, IMHO - I didn't want to put it down (just ask my husband, who was forced to eat an extra-late dinner one day because I had just a few chapters left to read).
Dillard has moved from a defense attorney to the prosecutor's office, but from both sides now he's had to deal with the same hard-nosed, unfair and vindictive criminal court judge. When that judge's body turns up charred and hanging from a tree, Dillard isn't exactly crying, but then he finds himself at the center of the investigation. The son of his son's best friend, it turns out, is the prime suspect (the judge, it seems, had done his daddy wrong). Worse, the young college student has, in a panic, given critical evidence to Dillard's wife, who in turn destroyed it - thus committing a potentially criminal act that puts Dillard square in the middle of an ethics dilemma.
A second story line follows a young girl who loses her entire family - then most of another - and a third focuses on the sudden disappearance of a young woman who recently joined the district attorney's office. There's even a fourth as Dillard struggles with his unsuccessful defense of a client who was convicted and has just been executed - a client Dillard continues to believe was innocent.
All these situations are brought to closure by the end, of course; some happily, others not so much, depending on who you're rooting for. And, a big change at the end makes me eager to read the next installment (not that I wasn't already). Bring it on!
Injustice for All by Scott Pratt (Phoenix Flying Inc., December 2013); 367 pp.
4 stars out of 5
This is the second book in the series featuring Joe Dillard, who started as a criminal defense attorney in the first, An Innocent Client. This time out, he's switched to the dark side; burned out by his experiences defending guilty clients, Joe has accepted a job in the prosecutor's office. He'll make less money, but the opportunity to make amends for getting all those baddies off, he believes, will make up the difference.
He learns early on, though, that the office is no bed of roses; he's forced to work with another attorney who's at best a bumbling idiot, but the guy is related to the boss's wife and therefore enjoys free rein. At first, Joe is assigned to a rape case that is similarly complicated; the accusation is against an "upstanding" businessman who's a pillar of the local rural Tennessee community. While that's evolving, a family of four is brutally murdered. In short order, a retired high school principal and his wife meet a similar fate, and the evidence (and a witness) point to two young men and a young woman, all of whom are Satan-worshippers.
The young men are captured, and it's up to Joe to make sure they get their due (for one, that's execution, but not for the other one, who's a juvenile and thus ineligible for the death penalty under Tennessee law). There's insufficient evidence, though, to reel in Natasha, the young woman believed to be at the very least the instigator of the grisly murders if not the killer herself. She remains on the outside looking in, making everyone involved worried that before long, she'll stop looking and start acting. And with Satan as her guide, life for everyone involved in the case soon could become a living hell.
Events move along at a rapid pace, prompting me to carve out extra time to get it finished. If I have a complaint, it's that the ending seems a little too contrived (and admittedly, the Twilight Zone aspect turned me off a bit). The epilogue wrapped up all the loose ends in a neat and tidy fashion - but again, a bit too quickly for my liking (and, IMHO, some of those ends were a little too important to warrant such short shrift).
As I said in my review of Pratt's first Dillard book, I'm happy to find a new-to-me series I can turn to when I'm looking for something easy to read and/or to fill in the gaps between release dates of books by my favorite authors. Although this one may be a tad less enjoyable to me than the first one, it certainly didn't dampen my enthusiasm for the series. On to the next!
In Good Faith by Scott Pratt (Phoenix Flying Inc., December 2013); 384 pp.
This is the third book I've read in the author's series featuring Tennessee lawyer Joe Dillard, and I continue to be amazed at how much I'm enjoying them. This is the best so far, IMHO - I didn't want to put it down (just ask my husband, who was forced to eat an extra-late dinner one day because I had just a few chapters left to read). 
