The Ben Kincaid Novels Series

A defense lawyer’s newest client is a racist—but is he a killer? “Bernhardt keeps his readers coming back for more” (Library Journal).  For Ben Kincaid, the forests of Arkansas are a place to escape the hubbub of the courtroom and enjoy the outdoors. But for the thousands of Vietnamese refugees who came through this backwoods area in the mid-1970s, the Ouachita Mountains were a place to begin their new life in the United States. And for Tommy Vuong, an activist among the American-born Vietnamese, the woods are a place to die. When Vuong is found stabbed through the neck beneath a burning cross, the logical suspect is Donald Vick, a member of a local white supremacist hate group who was seen fighting with Vuong the previous day. No lawyer in the county will take Vick’s case, but Kincaid can’t refuse. His new client is sullen, hateful, and demands to plead guilty—even though there’s no evidence linking him to the crime scene. No matter what it takes, Kincaid will bring justice to the backwoods, whether the inhabitants like it or not.

A struggling Tulsa lawyer accepts a six-figure job—but the price may far outweigh the pay: “Bernhardt just gets better and better” (The Daily Oklahoman).  Since he fled the dehumanizing tedium of corporate law, Ben Kincaid has scratched out a living on the rough side of Tulsa, working cases strictly related to the three Ds: divorce, deeds, and dog bites. So when the state’s largest corporation, the Apollo Consortium, offers him six figures to join them as in-house counsel, he can’t turn down the pay raise. But if the Apollo partners think they’ve hired a legal stooge, they’re wrong. Kincaid is a bloodhound, determined to sniff out the truth no matter the cost. As Kincaid tries to fit in at his new offices, a serial killer stalks Tulsa, luring young women into his car before chopping them into bits. But these horrors pale in comparison to the infighting at Apollo. And when he comes out on the wrong side of a turf war, Kincaid finds himself defending a hapless loser against a murder charge. The client’s name: Ben Kincaid.

A lawyer defends an animal rights activist accused of killing a lumberjack: “[A] superb legal thriller [and] wonderfully riveting read” (Booklist).   The trouble all begins when Ben Kincaid meets Margery. Kincaid is a lawyer on a book tour, at a poorly attended signing in Washington state, and she is the bookseller’s cat. When he learns that the perfectly healthy cat is to be euthanized, Kincaid breaks into the bookstore, planning a rescue. Instead, he lands himself in jail, where he learns of a non-feline who’s facing the death penalty as well.   George Zakin is the head of a radical environmentalist organization called Green Rage. Six years earlier, Kincaid got him acquitted on charges of breaking and entering, and now Zakin needs his help again. He has been accused of planting a bomb that killed a lumberjack, and Kincaid will do whatever he can to save the environmentalist’s neck—if he can get himself out of jail first.

A cop killing pits defense attorney Ben Kincaid against the boys in blue in this national bestseller. “Outstanding . . . amazing . . . You never see the ending coming” (Tulsa World).   It is one of the most gruesome murders Oklahoma has ever seen. A horribly mutilated man is found chained to a statue in the middle of downtown Tulsa, secured so tightly that it takes the police hours to get him down. As the city’s workforce stares, the police realize something terrible: The victim is one of their own.   They arrest the dead cop’s girlfriend, a nineteen-year-old stripper whose camera-ready appearance quickly turns the trial into a media circus. And when idealistic young defense attorney Ben Kincaid gets the dancer off on a technicality, the city erupts. Unable to try their suspect a second time, the Tulsa police build a case against Kincaid, arresting him after they stumble across the murder weapon in his office. Every instrument in the state’s justice system is turned against him, but Kincaid isn’t worried. He’s faced worse odds before.

A lawyer must defend a mayor accused of murdering his family: “Bernhardt again proves himself master of the courtroom drama” (Library Journal).  With his winning smile, acting experience, and history as one of the best quarterbacks Oklahoma University has ever seen, Wally Barrett had no trouble becoming Tulsa’s first black mayor. But this perfect politician has a dark side, too. One afternoon at an ice cream parlor, a dozen people watch as he nearly hits his wife during an argument about their children. That same night, a neighbor calls the police after hearing screams from inside the mayor’s house. The patrolman discovers the first lady and her children murdered, and the mayor nowhere to be found. Barrett is captured after a high-speed chase, insensible and covered in blood. The only person willing to defend him is Ben Kincaid, a struggling defense lawyer with a history of winning impossible cases. But when the national media descends on Tulsa, Kincaid will have to do something he’s never done before, and oversee an increasingly wild three-ring circus.

A routine personal injury case leads a lawyer into a decade-old murder mystery: “[A] superb legal thriller . . . Wonderfully diverting reading” (Booklist).  Ben Kincaid’s air-conditioner is on the fritz, his staff is on half-pay, and his sister has just disappeared, leaving him holding her baby. He needs fast money, and a quick-and-dirty personal injury suit could do the job. But what looks like a sure-fire case turns out to be something far more complicated. His prospective client hopes to rescue his son—a twenty-eight-year-old with the mind of a child. Ten years earlier, Leeman was accused of murdering a woman with a golf club, and he has been locked in a mental institution ever since. Now he is finally about to come to trial, and Kincaid sees no way to save him. But when a young Tulsa boy goes missing, Kincaid senses a connection between the two cases. Finding the abductor and could mean saving lives—Leeman’s, the kidnapped child’s, and those of the countless victims to come.

Retired from law, Ben Kincaid is forced to return to the bar when a case—and a corpse—fall in his lap After years of struggling, Ben Kincaid shuts down his small legal office and decides to make a living doing something that—compared to practicing law in Tulsa—is easy money: playing jazz piano. He buys a minivan to haul his gear, and gets steady gigs playing in a combo at Uncle Earl’s Jazz Emporium. His new career is just starting to take off when a body falls from the Emporium ceiling, knocking the wind out of Kincaid and sending him right back to his old profession. The dead woman is Cajun Lily Campbell, a grand dame of the Tulsa music scene and onetime girlfriend of Uncle Earl himself. And Kincaid must be careful as he readies the old jazzman’s defense, because there is a killer on the north side of town who would like nothing more than to hear the piano player’s last tune.

An attorney crusades against an industrial giant while a serial killer terrorizes Tulsa in this legal thriller that delivers “fresh, often witty dialogue” (Publishers Weekly).  Leukemia is a terrible disease but also, thankfully, a rare one. So why have eleven children from a suburb outside of Tulsa have perished from this horrible illness in the last few years? The children’s parents blame Blaylock Industrial, a massive corporation whose factory lies just outside of their bucolic small town, but they have no proof beyond gut instinct—and the terrible certainty that comes with the grief of losing a child. To prove such a spectacular claim could cost millions, and no law firm is willing to take on such an expense. That is, until the parents meet Ben Kincaid. An idealistic young attorney with a shoestring practice on the rough side of Tulsa, Kincaid is nearly broke when he brings the case against Blaylock and its army of lawyers. But though the odds are stacked against him, Kincaid will risk everything to win a settlement and make sure that no more children die.

A lawyer investigates the murder of an aspiring adoptive father: “A climax that will take most readers by surprise” (Chicago Tribune).  It’s Ben Kincaid’s first day as an associate at corporate giant Raven, Tucker & Tubb, and he’s ready to start the long climb up the ladder to partnership. But he’s barely cleared the first rung when a body trips him up. Ben’s first task is to arrange an adoption for one of the firm’s biggest clients—a bit of grunt work that becomes interesting when he meets the child in question. Emily suffers from Korsakov’s Syndrome, a rare disorder that prevents her from forming memories, and Jonathan and Bertha Adams want nothing more than to raise her as their own. But Kincaid has just begun getting the paperwork together when he gets a chilling phone call: Jonathan has been found dead, hacked to pieces in an alleyway. Investigating the killing will take Kincaid down a fearsome path, leading him to wish that, like Emily, he had the power to forget.

From “a first-rate storyteller”: An ex-corporate lawyer in Oklahoma starts a new career defending the innocent (Tulsa World).  Ben Kincaid is too honest for corporate law. When his refusal to compromise his ideals gets him tossed out of Tulsa’s largest, most corrupt firm, he hangs out his shingle on the rough side of town. He works for peanuts—and occasionally chickens—but is safe in the knowledge that he is helping people who have nowhere else to turn. His newest client is also one of his oldest friends: Christina McCall, a onetime colleague in the world of corporate law. Christina is beautiful, daringly dressed, and on trial for a murder she didn’t commit. The last thing Christina remembers is the smell of her mother’s perfume. When she comes out of her stupor, her client is dead, the gun is in her hand, and the police are cuffing her wrists. Proving her innocence may be an impossible, but the impossible is becoming Kincaid’s specialty.

From “a first-rate storyteller”: An ex-corporate lawyer in Oklahoma starts a new career defending the innocent (Tulsa World).  Ben Kincaid is too honest for corporate law. When his refusal to compromise his ideals gets him tossed out of Tulsa’s largest, most corrupt firm, he hangs out his shingle on the rough side of town. He works for peanuts—and occasionally chickens—but is safe in the knowledge that he is helping people who have nowhere else to turn. His newest client is also one of his oldest friends: Christina McCall, a onetime colleague in the world of corporate law. Christina is beautiful, daringly dressed, and on trial for a murder she didn’t commit. The last thing Christina remembers is the smell of her mother’s perfume. When she comes out of her stupor, her client is dead, the gun is in her hand, and the police are cuffing her wrists. Proving her innocence may be an impossible, but the impossible is becoming Kincaid’s specialty.

An attorney crusades against an industrial giant while a serial killer terrorizes Tulsa in this legal thriller that delivers “fresh, often witty dialogue” (Publishers Weekly).  Leukemia is a terrible disease but also, thankfully, a rare one. So why have eleven children from a suburb outside of Tulsa have perished from this horrible illness in the last few years? The children’s parents blame Blaylock Industrial, a massive corporation whose factory lies just outside of their bucolic small town, but they have no proof beyond gut instinct—and the terrible certainty that comes with the grief of losing a child. To prove such a spectacular claim could cost millions, and no law firm is willing to take on such an expense. That is, until the parents meet Ben Kincaid. An idealistic young attorney with a shoestring practice on the rough side of Tulsa, Kincaid is nearly broke when he brings the case against Blaylock and its army of lawyers. But though the odds are stacked against him, Kincaid will risk everything to win a settlement and make sure that no more children die.