Rattlesnake Lawyer

Book excerpt: "Watch for Rattlesnakes" reads the sign at the first rest stop within new Mexico's "Fighting 14th" judicial discrict. Young attorney Dan Shepard has been fired by his mother's prestigious Washington, DC law firm, and now must make his home aming the rattlesnakes. A failed stand-up comic forced into the law to pay the bills, Dan finds nothing amusing about his first case. His client, Jesus Villalobos, faces a murder charge, but nothing is what is seems, and the State is a little too eager to pin the charge on Jesus. Along the way, it is hard to tell who is the lawyer and who is the client. Rattlesnake Lawyer is a darkly comic tale of a young lawyer's coming of age in a small town where everyone knows what's going on--except him.