Product Description

Bestselling author William Bernhardt is an unsurpassed master at blending psychological suspense with gripping, surprise-filled legal action. Now, Bernhardt and his crusading attorney Ben Kincaid return in a thrilling story of love, hate, and the power of a courtroom to separate deception from the truth.

In Tulsa, Ben Kincaid has built a national reputation as a stalwart defense attorney who will fight tirelessly for his clients. In Evanston, Illinois, Johnny Christensen has built a national reputation as a sadistic bigot who beat and stabbed a gay man and left him to die. When Johnny’s mother comes to Ben and begs him to defend her son, he has one secret reason for saying no.

But while Ben turns down the case, his younger, beautiful partner, Christina McCall, does not. Traveling to Chicago and facing an explosion of controversy and deadly violence surrounding the trial, Christina steps into a case that is already nearly lost. Her client’s only defense is his claim that he left his victim bludgeoned but alive. To prove that someone else committed the actual murder, Christina needs a little bit of evidence—and a good motive to go with it.

When unforeseen circumstances force Ben Kincaid to enter the trial, the defense attorney sees only one way to prove Johnny’s innocence. But Ben’s plan means luring a killer out of the woodwork—even though he may kill again. . . .

A novel of gut-wrenching twists and surprises, this thriller brilliantly explores the passions between lovers—and the passions behind society’s most heinous crimes. Once again, the remarkable William Bernhardt makes us challenge every assumption, second-guess every judgment, and feel the terror of the truth.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79816 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-25
• Released on: 2005-01-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Bernhardt sticks to his tried-and-true formula in his 13th novel to feature Tulsa defense attorney Ben Kincaid. An odious criminal defendant is foisted on Kincaid's practice: Johnny Christensen, a hate-filled frat boy accused of beating a gay man to death outside a singles bar in a Chicago suburb. Despite Kincaid's reluctance to take the case (at first, he flat-out refuses, for reasons he keeps hidden), he and partner Christina McCall put up the best criminal defense they can, allowing Bernhardt to explore issues of justice and contemporary mores while keeping the tension high. The well-paced plot weaves the hate crime of the title together with an Oklahoma kidnapping, Kincaid's romantic past, another grisly unsolved murder and a detective gone bad. In between, Bernhardt introduces readers to a straight male prostitute named Charlie the Chicken, a poetry-reciting homicide cop, a Christian social organization that opposes homosexuality above all else and a gay activist group that dabbles in courtroom executions and terrorism. Bernhardt places a premium on the plot twists, and his characters sometimes act in unlikely ways in service to the surprise. It should also be noted that the primary villain proves as eager to provide exposition of the scheme once nabbed as the typical Scooby Doo bad guy. That said, Bernhardt offers another good read, full of courtroom fireworks, double-crosses and even a bit of romance.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Bernhardt's latest Ben Kincaid mystery begins with the violent beating of a gay man that apparently escalated to murder. Two young men are arrested for the crime; during their trial, one of the defendants is shot to death in the courtroom, and their attorney is wounded. The surviving defendant's mother asks Ben, the noted defense attorney, to take her son's case. Ben, in an uncharacteristic move, declines, refusing even to discuss the case with his partner, Christina McCall (who, in turn, annoys Ben by taking the young man's case herself). Why is Ben, who specializes in defending people with the odds stacked against them, turning this one down? And why does it seem like the defendant's mother and Ben know each other? This novel is as much about the case against the accused murderer as it is about Ben himself. By peeling back a few more layers of his character's psyche, Bernhardt revitalizes a series that had shown signs of going stale. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Electrifying...a must read...kudos to Bernhardt for daring to go where angels fear to tread.”
–Tulsa World

“[Hate Crime] has it all...[it's] a page-turner and is definitely William Bernhardt at his best."
–Times Record News

“[Bernhardt is] master of the legal thriller."
–Abilene Reporter-News



From the Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews

Further exploration
This Ben Kincaid mystery further explores both the surface
interactions between Ben and his partner Christina as well
as the concept of a "hate" crime.
Here, a gay man is tortured and murdered, apparently by two
stupid, drunken college frat boys, and when Ben, the champion
of the unpopular defendant, is asked to defend one of them,
he surprisingly refuses. Everyone who knows him is mystified.
But then his partner Christina, over his objections, takes on the defense, and the case plods along with the defendant looking
worse all the time.
A parallel case, which doesn't seem to have any connection with
the gay murder, is also tackled, and Ben's pal, the Tulsa PD
detective who loves driving his vintage high-powered Pontiac,
is working that one. The Tulsa case involved a kidnapping with
ransom, where the victim was left unharmed, but the kidnappers
suddenly, and surprisingly since they were surrounded by both
local police and the FBI, disappear. Mike, the detective, pursues the case as long as possible, until his superiors assign
him to more current cases. But Mike doesn't forget, and he keeps trying to remember details of some aspect of the case that
is in the background of his mind and won't go away.
As Christina's case is nearing its end, with virtually no hope,
Ben is visited by the defendant's mother, and that whole visit
is quite mysterious, and Ben's office-mates wonder what is going on. Christina is determined to learn how and why that other woman seems to know Ben, when Ben denies such knowledge.
This Kincaid entry is rather more complex than most of these,
and the cases come to a nice conclusion; the only drawback to
many readers will be that the ending is a bit too pat and too
sudden. It has a feel that the author sort of took the easy
way out at the end by offering up a solution that isn't entirely
logical.
But it is interesting and very readable.

Excellent plotting
Some crimes are more repulsive than others are, as Major Mike Morelli of the Tulsa PD Homicide Division knows very well. He along with the FBI and a swat team are trying to rescue an eight-year-old boy who was kidnapped eight days ago. The police know where they are and plan to neutralize the kidnappers so they will not kill the boy. When they finally make a move, the child is unharmed but the kidnappers are missing.

In Chicago, two homophobic college men beat a gay bartender within an inch of his life but they leave him alive when they walked away. His body was found in the perpetrator's fraternity house very much dead. When one of the defendants and his lawyer is killed in open court, the remaining defendant's mother asks lawyer Ben Kincaid to defend him. He declines for personal reasons but his partner agrees to take the case not realizing everyone connected to the case is in danger because it is linked back to the kidnapping in Tulsa.

William Bernhardt is one of the best writers of legal thrillers in today's competitive sub-genre. His protagonist is a vulnerable champion of the underdog who believes everyone has the right to an attorney. The reason he refuses the case involving a relationship he had with the suspect's mother that ended badly and gives the reader a glimpse into his battered soul. When he becomes involved in the case, he does not let his personal feelings interfere with the job and readers will root for him to prevail even though they detest the person he represents.

Harriet Klausner

Too many plots spoil the thriller.
"Hate Crime" is the latest book in William Bernhardt's series featuring the likeable Ben Kincaid, a defense attorney with a penchant for taking on hopeless cases. Ben's former legal assistant, Christina McCall, is now his partner. Christina would like to take her relationship with Ben to the next level, but Ben has never been able to acknowledge his deep feelings for Christina.

One day, a mysterious woman comes into the law firm of Kincaid and McCall, asking for Ben's help. Her name is Ellen Christensen, and her son, Johnny, has been arrested for the vicious murder of a gay man named Tony Barovick. When Ben sees Ellen, he is visibly upset, and he is adamant that he will not take Johnny's case. After Christina realizes that she will not be able to persuade Ben to change his mind, she decides to defend Johnny herself.

"Hate Crime" is one of the busiest books that I have read in some time. Bernhardt starts off his novel with a kidnapping, and he then segues to Johnny Christensen's murder trial. Mike Morelli, Ben's former brother-in-law, is also featured in this book. Along with his attractive female partner and an alluring FBI agent, Mike is investigating a series of gruesome murders. Ultimately, all of these plot lines somehow tie together.

Bernhardt's heart is in the right place when he tackles the theme that gay people have the right to live in peace. The author demonstrates, through scenes of graphic violence, how hatred and prejudice can lead to brutal actions. However, as a thriller, "Hate Crimes" is flawed. There are too many twists and turns that come out of left field, and some of the startling revelations at the end are incredibly far-fetched.

On the plus side, we long-suffering readers finally learn what has been bugging Ben all these years. Bernhardt reveals some secrets from Ben's past that explain why he behaves so awkwardly around Christina. These few tidbits, however, are not enough to redeem "Hate Crime," which is too unfocused and heavy-handed to succeed as a legal thriller.