The Appeal

Two years into a life sentence, Owen Vorhees files a pro se petition under 28 U. S. C. Section 2255. He argues ineffective assistance of counsel. The lawyer named in the petition is Sloane Korva. Sloane is forty-one. She left the federal public defender's office eighteen months ago. She is now a partner at Brock & Korva, a small post-conviction firm she founded with Cassia Brock in Ohio City. Owen's petition arrives in a manila envelope on a Tuesday in January.
The petition is wrong about Sloane. It is right about the case. There was a second person in the parking deck the night Lila Renn died, and Sloane never named him on the record. In the eighteen months that follow, Renny Kowal traces a chain of payments through three shell companies to a bank in Cyprus. The beneficial owner is Edmund Vasiliev, fifty-eight, a former DEA contractor in private practice in a small Ohio River town.
The Sixth Circuit grants the petition. The new trial begins. The Appeal is a Cleveland legal thriller and the fourth book in the Justice Files series. Read The Verdict Is In, Contempt of Court, and Hung Jury first, or start here and circle back. The four-book arc concludes with this series finale. For readers of John Grisham, Lisa Scottoline, William Landay, Robert Dugoni, Linda Fairstein, and Rebecca Cantrell.