Double Tap, by Steve Martini

I am a longtime fan of Steve Martini, so when I found I could get his latest novel in audiobook format for FREE, I was quite excited. This recording is 13 hours and 45 minutes long, and is read by George Guidall.

Martini's legal thrillers are the best I have ever read, leaving Grisham in the dust, with lots of outstanding courtroom drama. Make a point of picking up The Judge, The Jury, The Arraignment, or any of his other titles that seem lawyer-oriented. Feel free to avoid Critical Mass. Recurring characters include Paul Madriani, a smart lawyer with a daughter named Sara whose wife has died of cancer, and Harry Hinds, a curmudgeonly legal sidekick who provides most of the comic relief in Martini's books.

In Double Tap, a woman software executive is killed in her home, assassination style. The weapon and silencer are found, separately, outside her beach home in a somewhat botched attempt to dispose of them. The weapon belonged to a previously employed private security detail member with whom she had been fooling around. The dismissed security man, Eliliano Luiz, is a former Army special forces member, and he is now in jail as the chief suspect.

Madriani cannot believe that this man would have left such an obvious trail of breadcrumbs back to himself, and starts looking for other reasons why someone would want this woman dead. As it turns out, she has connections with the Pentagon and had a falling out with them over a security program that she has been providing for Homeland Security.

This is a well-written story with a twist. It's also very well researched and somewhat alarming. I look forward to more just like it,and it gets 4 stars.