Thornton Mystery (Tolbert)

When two men are murdered one muggy September night in a New Orleans housing project, an eye witness identifies only one suspect, Louis Bishop, a homeless sixteen-year-old. Louis is arrested the next day and thrown into Orleans Parish Prison. Emma Thornton, a law professor and director of the Homeless Law Clinic at St. Stanislaus Law School, agrees to represent him. When they take on the case, Emma and her students discover a tangle of corruption, intrigue, and more violence than they would have thought possible, even in New Orleans. They uncover secrets about the night of the murders, and illegal dealings in the city, and within Louis's family. As the case progresses, Emma and her family are thrown into a series of life-threating situations. But, in the end, Emma gains Louis's trust, which allows him to reveal his last, and most vital secret.

Emma Thornton is back in Sanctuary, C. L. Tolbert's third novel in the Thornton Mystery Series. This time, she's agreed to represent a former client accused of killing the leader of a suspicious cult in New Orleans. James Crosby, the charismatic leader of the Japaprajnas, is found dead one late afternoon, his body draped over an iron fence in the courtyard of the nineteenth-century house where he and several cult members work and live. Although they initially presumed the fall was an accident, police investigators quickly discover that James received a lethal dose of a drug before he was pushed from his office balcony. The next day the police discover a syringe and a substantial amount of the drug which killed James in Stacey Robert's bedroom. The nineteen-year-old cult member is brought in for questioning, which leads to her arrest. Emma, who had represented Stacey when she was a sixteen-year-old runaway, agrees to take the case. Convinced that she is innocent, Emma begins an investigation into the cult and its members. Emma's questions uncover dangerous secrets, illicit activities, and the exploitation of innocent victims. Emma's suspicions lead her to the killer's trail and the case's final resolution.

A quiet tree-lined street in New Orleans erupts in panic when the body of Sally Wilcox is discovered by her landlord. Sally had been stabbed, and she was clutching a kitchen knife in her hand at the time of her death. Later, police discover evidence at the scene which implicates Sally's son, Jeremy, in her murder. He was arrested the next day. Law school professor Emma Thornton is convinced by a friend to take Jeremy's case. She begins her investigation into Jeremy and his family, and the facts surrounding the night of the murder. Layer after layer of family secrets slowly reveal themselves, as the numbers of murders and kidnappings multiply. Holding the key to the killer's trail and the case's final resolution, Emma's success depends on whether she can maintain control over her own reckless impulses.