The Neon Lawyer by Victor Methos

Paperback:  At his best, men is the noblest of animals.  Separated from law and justice, he is the worst. - Aristotle

A young lawyer gets in over his head but he won't go down without a fight.

With money and hope in short supply, newly minted attorney Brigham Theodore decides it's time to lower his standards.  He joins a seedy fly-by-night firm in Salt Lake City out of desperation.  After he loses his first case - a speeding ticket - he's convinced his career is over but to his shock, his boss hands him a slightly more complex case:  a capital murder.

Brigham's new client is Amanda Pierce, a lost, exhausted woman who gunned down the man who tortured and killed her six-year-old daughter.  A jury may prove sympathetic to her unbearable pain but the law is no fan of vigilante justice and neither is Vince Dale, the slick and powerful prosecutor who's never lost a murder case.

There's no question that Amanda pulled the trigger - she did it in front of five witnesses.  If she pleads guilty, she will avoid a death sentence but saving her life this way comes with an admission that what she did was wrong.  However, if she refuses the "guilty" label, Brigham will have no choice but to fight for his career and Amanda's life.

The Neon Lawyer (2014) is based on a true story.

About the author:  Victor Methos was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and lived in Pakistan and Iran before permanently settling in the United States.  A fluent speaker of several Middle Eastern languages, he studied science, philosophy and religion at the University of Utah before attending law school.  He's worked as a prosecutor specializing in violent crime and is currently a criminal defense attorney at a multi-million dollar law firm, a serial entrepreneur, and an international bestselling author who’s written over forty books.  He’s currently signed with Thomas & Mercer and has sold over half a million books since 2011.

His current goals are to climb the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on earth, and hopefully not die in the process and be ridden down a mountain as a sled by the survivors.  He divides his time between San Diego, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.

Rating:  3/5