Description
The Collapse of Honor is the third legal thriller/suspense novel by Larry L. Hines that deals with the dark side of our justice system. It takes the reader inside a major Los Angeles law firm and reveals in tragic detail the slippery slope that law partners walk from ambition to greed to dishonesty in the battle over who makes the most money. Greed is the beast within the belly of every law firm and is in grand display in this novel.
The main characters are Dillon Clark, a famous trial lawyer who recently lost his wife, and his paralegal, Kelly Parks. The focus is the shocking firing of Mark Austin, a young attorney at the Baukus & Johnson law firm, who had just been promoted to Junior Partner for his success in landing the firm’s largest client. Mark was devastated and, as expected, humiliated when he had to tell his wife he had just been fired. With his finances and sex life in ruins, he desperately tries to find an attorney willing to fight the law firm but quickly finds that no one will take his case. His old law school professor then refers him to Dillon Clark. Dillon is reluctant but finally agrees when his paralegal, Kelly Parks, makes an emotional appeal after meeting with Mark and his wife Suzzi.
In the resulting trial, Dillon fights not only a skilled defense lawyer, but also the altering of evidence by the law firm and the interference by other judges who were former partners of the firm who try to sway the trial judge. There are many cliff-hanging ups and downs as the trial progresses and Dillon is sure he will lose the case when the jury began arguing among themselves and several jurors asked the judge if he could stop the trial and let them decide without hearing any more evidence. Only the reader can determine if justice was really done in the end.
