Don’t get excited; that was neither a mean joke nor a promise of a non-litigious future. LAST LAWYER STANDING is the title of Douglas Corleone’s latest — and last — Kevin Corvelli legal thriller.

Douglas has honored me with a guest post on how he feels about the end of this series as he moves on to a new one.

Take it away, Doug!

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The release of Last Lawyer Standing has been a bittersweet experience for me. This is the third and final book in the Kevin Corvelli series of legal thrillers published by Minotaur Books. In the Spring, Minotaur will release Good as Gone, the first book in a new series of international thrillers featuring a former U.S. Marshal named Simon Fisk, who now specializes in retrieving kidnap victims overseas. While I couldn’t be more excited to start a new chapter in my career, closing the first chapter is more difficult than I ever imagined it would be.

The Kevin Corvelli series began when my debut novel One Man’s Paradise won the 2009 Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award. In the novel, a hotshot criminal defense attorney named Kevin Corvelli flees New York City for Honolulu after blowing a sensational case that ultimately cost a client his life. Although Kevin intends to keep a low profile in Hawaii – to take on petty violations and traffic tickets – Kevin soon finds himself again in the national spotlight, representing a young law student accused of killing his beautiful ex-girlfriend on Oahu’s world-famous Waikiki Beach.

One Man’s Paradise went on to be nominated for the 2010 Shamus Award for Best First Novel. The entire experience was all the more incredible for me, because Kevin Corvelli’s life at the time very much mirrored my own. Prior to becoming a writer in Hawaii, I too was practicing criminal law in New York City. And although I left New York and the law for very different reasons, I faced many of the challenges Kevin faced after moving from the Empire State to the Aloha State. During the writing of One Man’s Paradise and its sequel Night on Fire, I fell in love with the Hawaiian Islands and the people who populate them. Having a genuine paradise as my setting for a series of crime novels created unique challenges but also made the research feel a lot less like work and a lot more like play.

In Last Lawyer Standing, Kevin takes on two of the toughest cases of his legal career. In one case, Kevin represents Hawaii’s governor who is suspected of killing his pregnant mistress, which again places Kevin square in the national spotlight. In the second, Kevin must risk everything to defend the career criminal who once saved Kevin’s life. By the third and final novel, Kevin is understandably world-weary, and he must make several key decisions that will affect the rest of his life. Last Lawyer Standing provides the reader a definite feeling of closure for the Kevin Corvelli series. The book also represents closure for its author. The release of Last Lawyer Standing brings to a close a crucial chapter in my own life, one that gave me the opportunity to leave the law and to begin writing full-time. For that, I will always be grateful to Kevin Corvelli and to the people at Minotaur Books who helped me bring him to life.   

For more information, visit DouglasCorleone.com.

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Full-time writer in Hawaii. Tough life.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write the paragraph wherein a character either ends one part of life to begin another, or first solidly realized that the change must happen or is happening.

MA