This image is the cover for the book Bad Lawyer

Bad Lawyer

To keep his practice alive, a desperate lawyer takes a case defending a battered wife
Just seven years after he left law school, Sid Kaplan was one of New York’s top defense attorneys. With a glittering style and a hunger for competition, he was as fierce as they come. He was the go-to lawyer for Manhattan’s toughest, flashiest criminals—until his mother’s death wrecked his confidence. Suddenly, the only way to sustain his sixteen-hour days was a ceaseless stream of cocaine and scotch, a combination that ruined his life’s work in a matter of months. His only remaining employees are Caleb and Julia—a pair of ex-clients who don’t mind working for irregular pay. Sid’s latest bum case is Priscilla Sweet, a drug addict with priors, violent tendencies, and a dead husband whom she may or may not have killed in self-defense. She also has dangerous friends, which means that defending Prissy will make Sid famous again—either on the front page, or in the obituaries. 

Stephen Solomita

Stephen Solomita (b. 1943) is an American author of thrillers. Born in Bayside, Queens, he worked as a cab driver before becoming a novelist in the late 1980’s. His first novel, A Twist of the Knife (1988) won acclaim for its author’s intimate knowledge of New York’s rough patches, and for a hardboiled style that raised a gritty look at urban terrorism above the level of a typical thriller. Solomita wrote six more novels starring the disaffected NYPD cop Stanley Moodrow, concluding the series with Damaged Goods (1996). Solomita continued writing in the same hardboiled style, producing tough, standalone novels like Mercy Killing (2009) and Angel Face (2011). Under the pseudonym David Cray, he writes gentler thrillers such as Dead Is Forever (2004), a traditional mystery in the mode of Ellery Queen. His most recent novel is Dancer In The Flames (2012). He continues to live and write in New York City.