Ford County

Ford County gathers four novellas, all set in the fictional Ford County, Mississippi. Each one puts a lawyer in front of a case that pulls three ways at once: toward career, toward conscience, and toward family.

The lawyers include a prosecutor and a defense attorney, plus two others. Their cases bring them up against serial killers, mobsters and corruption in a small Mississippi town where the people on every side of a dispute know one another.

The plotting is courtroom thriller material: jury tampering, a case that is personal to the lawyer handling it, and a ticking clock. Because the book is an anthology, each story is self-contained and quicker to read than a full novel, with its own case and its own set of stakes.

Murder, violence and graft darken every story, and the Mississippi setting adds a gritty, atmospheric undertone. There is no romance subplot, only legal pressure and the question of what each lawyer is willing to give up.