11/24/2014
Abe Beckham, the narrator of much of this gripping but flawed stand-alone from bestseller Grippando (Need You Now), still mourns the death of his first wife, Samantha Vine. That’s why Abe, senior trial counsel at the state attorney’s office in Miami-Dade County, keeps close contact with Samantha’s family. This closeness doesn’t sit well with his second wife, Angelina, who wants him to cut all ties with the Vines. Abe complicates his professional life by monitoring the murder investigation of an old flame, Miami attorney Tyla Tomkins, whose mangled body was found in the Everglades. Is Tyla a victim of the machete-wielding serial killer known as Cutter? When Angelina disappears, FBI agent Victoria Santos wonders whether Abe was still romantically involved with Tyla. Grippando keeps the tension high with plausible twists, until the plot comes apart in a rushed ending. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management. (Jan.)

Praise for BLACK HORIZON
“James Grippando is a master of the legal thriller.” — Robert Massie, New York Times bestselling author

Advance Praise for Cane and Abe
“This gripping, unputdownable book has everything you crave in a crime novel: a complicated but winning protagonist, a puzzling murder and the kind of ending that just plain wallops you.” — Kate White, New York Times bestselling author on Cane and Abe

“Cane and Abe is a stunning thriller. Think Gone Girl meets Grisham, then throw in shocking twists and turns that will keep you on edge as you race to the end.” — Linda Fairstein, New York Times bestselling author

“Another fine stand-alone from the author of the Jack Swyteck legal thrillers...Grippando writes the heck out of this labyrinthine story, keeping us flipping the pages at a frantic pace.” — Booklist

“Grippando supplies a satisfyingly wild ride through PRESUMED INNOCENT territory.” — Kirkus Reviews on Cane and Abe

“Gripping..,Grippando keeps the tension high.” — Publishers Weekly on Cane and Abe

“Spellbinding” — Huffington Post

“Suspenseful ... moves at a brisk pace, with surprising twists and acutely drawn characters. Grippando poignantly illustrates a disintegrating marriage, allowing the reader to understand both Abe and Angelina’s side.” — South Florida Sun Sentinel

“[Grippando] is a skillful storyteller and … has a clear understanding of just how complex, and often unforgiving, the world can be.” — Washington Lawyer

[Grippando] is a skillful storyteller and … has a clear understanding of just how complex, and often unforgiving, the world can be.

Advance Praise for Cane and Abe
“This gripping, unputdownable book has everything you crave in a crime novel: a complicated but winning protagonist, a puzzling murder and the kind of ending that just plain wallops you.

Praise for BLACK HORIZON
“James Grippando is a master of the legal thriller.

Cane and Abe is a stunning thriller. Think Gone Girl meets Grisham, then throw in shocking twists and turns that will keep you on edge as you race to the end.

Spellbinding

Suspenseful ... moves at a brisk pace, with surprising twists and acutely drawn characters. Grippando poignantly illustrates a disintegrating marriage, allowing the reader to understand both Abe and Angelina’s side.

Another fine stand-alone from the author of the Jack Swyteck legal thrillers...Grippando writes the heck out of this labyrinthine story, keeping us flipping the pages at a frantic pace.

Another fine stand-alone from the author of the Jack Swyteck legal thrillers...Grippando writes the heck out of this labyrinthine story, keeping us flipping the pages at a frantic pace.

Black Horizon is timely, relentlessly paced and a thrill ride of the first order.

Grippando has been at the top of the legal-thriller ladder for some time, and ‘Blood Money’ will enhance his reputation and readership.

Grippando is a skilled writer, and he works enough variations on the familiar theme to keep us guessing. . . . Recommend this one to fans of Joseph Finder’s Paranoia, Company Man, or Power Play.

Intriguing … Grippando has become a master at taking “ripped from the headlines” events, in this case the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, and turning them into involving thrillers that, somehow, do not succumb to sensationalism. Grippando achieves this by continuing to focus on characters, especially showing new sides of Jack. Crisp dialogue and an insider’s view of Florida elevate “Black Horizon,” as do the evocative scenes set in Cuba.

Grippando is really good.

Grippando is really good.

04/01/2014
When a woman's mutilated body is discovered in the Everglades, Abe Beckham, a top prosecutor at the Miami State Attorney's Office, becomes a top suspect. He'd had an encounter with the woman after his wife Samantha's untimely death, and his new wife, Angelina, has vanished, too. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

Narrator Jonathan Davis conveys the shifting tension in this mystery as protagonist Abe Beckham, a Florida prosecuting attorney, finds himself on the wrong side of his own murder investigation. Delivering realistically nuanced voices, Davis uses subtle shifts in tone for female characters and mild but distinct voices for male characters. As the tension rises, Davis’s voice reflects Beckham’s increasing anxiety as the tables turn in his pursuit of a serial killer. Davis’s narration keeps the pace appropriate to to the action and the characters sympathetic while bringing the story to its gripping conclusion. M.L.R. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

2014-11-06
A stand-alone from the creator of adventurous lawyer Jack Swyteck (Black Horizon, 2014, etc.) that plumbs a Miami prosecutor's nightmare when a serial killer strikes a little too close to home.The Cutter, as he's been dubbed, has used a machete on four white women who'd dated black men, capping his gruesome murders by sprinkling ashes on his victims' foreheads. So why is his fifth victim highflying black attorney Tyla Tomkins, and where are the ashes this time? These are big problems, but Abe Beckham, a white senior trial counsel at the Miami-Dade Office of the State Attorney, is preoccupied with a more personal problem: how much FBI agent Victoria Santos, who's coordinating the hunt for the Cutter, will find out about his own relationship with Tyla. Abe, who married his old girlfriend Angelina after his African-American first wife, Samantha Vine, died, already has his hands full with Samantha's bipolar older brother, J.T., whose erratic behavior is constantly testing the promise Abe made his dying wife to look after him. Now he finds himself pondering possible links between the killings and the powerful Cortinas Sugar company and stressing out when Santos uncovers evidence that he'd seen Tyla a lot more recently than he'd told either her or Angelina. The pot comes to a rolling boil when Angelina vanishes shortly after capping a fight with Abe by throwing him out of their house. Has Abe killed his missing wife? Is her disappearance an attempt to incriminate him? Is Abe the Cutter? Did he kill Tyla as a copycat? And if he isn't and he didn't, who's gone to such trouble to frame him? If only the answers to these questions were as good as the questions. As it is, Grippando supplies a satisfyingly wild ride through Presumed Innocent territory before the inevitable letdown.