“In Bavaria the snow is always very deep. Once the first flakes dall it quickly buries everything that rests on the country earth: hedgehog nests, lost underpants, drawings of a crucified Jesus clumsily wrought in coloured pencil, worn bars of Fels-Naptha laundry soap good for removing most stains. I have seen all of these things vanish beneath that snow that rots everything, and if ever there was anything colder or more beautiful than a German winter I have yet to experience it.”

–extract from opening chapter–

“The grey morning veil still lingers over Miami Beach as the city starts to wake and the noise of opening cafes breaks the calm of dawn. Traffic is light at the famous art deco stretch known as Ocean Drive, which is just beginning to be mottled with people walking their dogs, buying the newspaper or exercising. No beachgoers or tourists yet, at least not this early in the day.”

–extract from prologue–

“The curtain opened and a tall, thin man, with dark hair and a scar over his eye, stepped out. He had a gun, and it was pointed straight at her head.
In her last remaining second, Edna spotted just inside the room beyond the curtain, an elderly Chinese man, seated at a desk, his forehead resting on it, a rivulet of blood training from his temple.
The last thing Edna heard was a woman – not Pam, because Pam was done talking – saying, “We have to get out of here.”
–extract from the prologue–

“‘Izzy’, my friend Maggie said, ‘I need you to try this murder case with me. Now.’
‘What?’ I shifted my cell phone to my other ear, not sure I’d heard her right. I had never tried a criminal case before – not even a parking ticket, much less a murder trial.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Right now.’
It was a hot August Thursday in Chicago, and I had just left the civil courthouse. I had taken three steps into the Daley Center Plaza, looked up at the massive Picasso sculture – an odd copper thing that looked half bird, half dog – and I actually said to it, ‘I’m back’.”
–opening paragraphs–