Knight and Devlin

Amid the flash and din of Boston's raucous Chinese New Year's celebration, an elderly man is shot while watching the parade from his window. Anthony Bradley, the son of an African-American judge, is standing across the street at the time and is immediately arrested for the crime. Michael Knight, a young lawyer who's going places, is surprised when Judge Bradley asks him to defend his son in such a high profile and politically delicate case. Luckily, Knight finds powerful support from Lex Devlin, a senior partner at his firm. Once the foremost criminal defense attorney in Boston, Devlin had mysteriously withdrawn from defense work in recent years. As Knight and Devlin investigate and prepare their client's defense, Knight is forced to confront the murky allegations that eclipsed his mentor's career and enter into the shadow world of gangland Chinatown. From the halls of Harvard to the streets of Chinatown, Knight doggedly pursues an investigation that involves drugs, prostitution, human trafficking, and a corruption scandal that could bring down the most powerful people in Boston.

After graduating from Harvard Law with his closest friend John McKedrick, Michael Knight takes a job with his mentor, legendary trial attorney Lex Devlin, while John becomes sole associate of a notorious mob lawyer. Michael never lost hope that John McKedrick would escape to cleaner pastures -until John is murdered in a car bombing bearing the signature of his questionable clientele. How could two friends who were so close have taken such wildly divergent paths? In the wake of McKedrick's murder, three men who took their own deviating paths will meet for the first time in forty years. Matt Ryan, a priest, Dominic Santangelo, a mafia don, and Lex Devlin put the past aside to focus on a present concern: Dominic's son has been charged with John McKedrick's murder. At Lex's urging, Michael Knight reluctantly agrees to represent the alleged bomber. In building a defense, Michael is drawn into a high-stakes art fraud that leads him from the seediest parts of Boston to the sophisticated Amsterdam inner sanctum of international crime.

In the crosshairs of two warring mobs Michael Knight and Lex Devlin agree to defend a jockey accused of murdering a fellow jockey during a race at Boston's Suffolk Downs. Michael's expertise in the machinations of the horse racing game is expected to serve them well. But a personal attachment to the murdered jockey thrusts Michael and Lex into the midst of conflict between Boston's Irish mafia and remnants of the terrorist branch of the Irish Republican Army. Now they are in the crosshairs of both, and the brutality of these combatants knows no bounds. As Michael and Lex uncover layer after layer of deceptions involved in the seamier side of horse racing, they become more dangerous to the gangs. In action that shuttles between Ireland and Boston, the lives of the lawyers as well as those close to them are in the gravest danger and the criminals show no mercy in their quest to put an end to this threat. As their investigation hurtles forward, it could end a wonderful law partnership due to the absence of living partners.

Knight and Devlin have entered the world of "blood diamonds." What do Boston, Dublin, and Sierra Leone have in common? The movement of blood diamonds at enormous profit but grave human expense: mafia killings in Boston and Ireland and child enslavement and murder in Sierra Leone. And who else could be ensnared in the middle of all of this but Michael Knight and Lex Devlin? Can they stop the enormously profitable trade of these tainted jewels? They must come between the Italian mafia in North Boston and the Irish mafia in South Boston including some remnants of the IRA in Ireland. They must also pit themselves against the enslaved and deadly child-army in Sierra Leone, who smuggle these diamonds into the mainstream for cash to buy weapons and drugs. At great personal risk, Knight and Devlin struggle to find a solution that satisfies this disparate combination of characters and, hopefully, dampens the diamond flow.

Danger escalates as Michael Knight and Lex Devlin enter into the defense of a Puerto Rican jockey charged with felony murder as a result of a fixed race at Boston's Suffolk Downs. As their investigation exposes the jockey's role, they become embroiled in a conflict between two Puerto Rican crime gangs. One of these gangs is aligned for the first time with Boston's Italian Mafia in tapping into almost limitless profits from the illicit trade of exotic and endangered species of wild animals captured in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil and smuggled through the shoreline of the Florida Keys. Working to free their client and to prevent the brutal abuse of these vulnerable animals, Michael and Lex find themselves squarely in the crossfire of rival organized crime gangs from the barrio of Jamaica Plain, Boston, to the gang-dominated streets of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.

Perfect for fans of Daniel Silva and Steve Berry. An authentic Stradivarius violin turns up in Romania. A Stradivarius is rare enough, but this one is even more special. It is thought to hold the code disclosing the location of a treasure hidden in the fifteenth century. The violin is steeped in haunting mystique: it is believed to have been hidden by Vlad Dracula, whose historic tyranny led to the fabrication of the myth of vampirism. Russian, Chinese, and Romanian gangs centered in Boston want the code and all of them are hot on the trail. Violence is their language-brutality, their technique. And who is hired to see that the treasure lands in the rightful place? None other than Michael Knight with a little help from his senior law partner Lex Devlin and his crony, Billy Coyne, Boston's deputy district attorney. Michael uses the thin leverage of his knowledge about the violin to keep each of the three gang leaders at bay, while he follows the chain of historic clues from a violin shop in the Carpathian Mountains to a gangster-infested nightclub in Bucharest, to a university in Istanbul, and back to the gang headquarters of the three competing criminal organizations. Secrets from the past and present collide along the perilous shuttle between Boston and Romania. In the end, what is the righteous solution?

These five novels in the Knight and Devlin series prove the Perry Mason spirit is alive and well. From Chinatown and the brutal Tongs in Neon Dragon to international stolen art in Frame-Up, to the warring Boston Irish mob and Italian Mafia in Black Diamond, to the diamond trade in Sierra Leone in Deadly Diamonds, and to the Amazon rainforest's exotic animals in Fatal Odds, Knight and Devlin are relentless in their pursuit of truth and justice. Dobbyn is a master of the game-legal thrillers that are topical and timeless.