Description

Moments after finishing a six-month sentence in the Roanoke jail for a crime he might not have committed, Baptist minister Joel King is served some unwelcome papers. His wife wants a divorce, and the teenage vixen everyone believes he seduced is suing him for five million dollars.

Holding on to his faith with a white-knuckle grip, Joel accepts a ride out west with Edmund Brooks, a member of his former flock who has some Commandment-challenging ideas about helping Joel help himself. Plain Heathen Mischief ranges from the cross to the double cross, from Virginia to Las Vegas, from courtrooms to trout streams, as Martin Clark follows his Job-like hero through dubious choices and high-dollar insurance scams to a redemption no reader could possibly predict.

About the Author

Entertainment Weekly called Martin Clark “hands down, our finest legal-thriller writer.” The New York Times stated that he is “the thinking man’s John Grisham.” The Winston-Salem Journal declared that he has set “the new standard by which other works of legal fiction should be judged,” and David Baldacci praised him as “a truly original writer.” A retired circuit court judge from Patrick County, Virginia, Martin is a cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Davidson College and attended law school at the University of Virginia. When he was appointed to the bench in 1992 at age thirty-two, he became one of the youngest judges in the history of the commonwealth. His novels have appeared on numerous bestseller lists, and the audio version of The Substitution Order was a number one national bestseller. Additionally, his novels have been chosen as a New York Times Notable Book, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Washington Post Book World Best Book of the Year, a Bookmarks Magazine Best Book of the Year, a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, a finalist for the Stephen Crane First Fiction Award, and the winner of the Library of Virginia’s People’s Choice Award in 2009, 2016 and 2020. Martin received the Patrick County Outstanding Community Service Award in 2016 and the Virginia State Bar’s Harry L. Carrico Professionalism Award in 2018. His wife, Deana, is a photographer, and they live on a farm with dogs, cats, chickens, guinea fowl and three donkeys.