The Rules of Action (The Devlin Legal Chronicles) (Volume 1) 2nd edition

It's 1970, and America has a dirty secret.

The author of "ZigZag"--"One of the boldest and most original first novels to appear in a long time" (Carl Hiaasen)--reinvents the legal drama popularized by Michael Connelly, John Grisham, and Scott Turow.

Human beings are being warehoused in substandard nursing homes, neglected, and left to die under suspicious circumstances. But this is America in the 1970s, and no one seems to know about it, much less care.

Rookie lawyer Connor J. Devlin discovers this secret underworld when he meets One-Armed Lucky, a cagey Vietnam vet and bail bondsman with an uncanny knowledge of the law. Lucky refers Devlin's new client, a heartbroken but tenacious woman who's convinced that neglectful nursing home care killed her mother Ann, a greyhound-racing devotee and Lucky's best friend.

But Devlin has a big problem. Taking on a nursing home for wrongful death in the 1970s--one backed by a corporation owned by a hardnosed Texas industrialist--will be almost impossible. Almost.

In this "briskly told and well-drawn" (Kirkus Reviews) legal drama, Landon J. Napoleon offers all the thrills of John Grisham and other masters of the genre, while proving that "legal procedure can provide as much action, suspense, and whodunit excitement as any shootout or car chase."