Booklife/Publisher's Weekly book review:
Rachlin's debut novel combines his legal expertise with the thriller suspense of a nightmare-plagued lawyer in over his head in a world of betrayal, murder, and the drug trade. With a family facing health crises and store clerks threatening to cut up his credit cards, Jake Dalton feels he must go against his wife's wishes to fulfill his duty as a provider-and to not only salvage his legal career but "rocket" it. Even though selling a jury on this prospective client's innocence would be like "climbing Mt. Everest in the dead of winter," Dalton takes on a high-paying cocaine-trafficking case that, inevitably, becomes much more dramatic-even deadly-than he was expecting. Dalton finds himself deep in trouble, not just with drug mules he represents, whose employers have a propensity for throat-slitting, but with the feds as well.
Readers can expect a thriller that charts over two criminal cases with big money and lives on the line as Conspiracy of Lies grapples with questions that Rachlin examines with compelling detail and persuasive authority. How can justice be best served? Who is innocent and how can they be protected? To those legal dilemmas, Rachlin adds an evergreen: How far will Dalton go to protect his family-and will his wife Elenea countenance his choice to defend drug runners? Driven through the eyes of Dalton, a character without extensive expertise in criminal law, the story offers readers the chance to see potential pitfalls that the protagonist himself does not.
The novel particularly shines in courtroom passages offering full accounts of the lawyers, judges, and juries and their complex procedural drama. Also engaging, but pained, is the romantic drama between Dalton and Elena, who is traumatized by childhood experiences with cartel violence in Colombia, and tells Dalton "Protecting the dregs of Miami isn't why I helped you through Yale." His constant choices to choose his career over his commitment to her give the book a raw tension.
Takeaway: Thriller about a lawyer defending drug traffickers-over his family's wishes.
