Horn's sharply drawn characters are like a well creased pair of slacks. If you like legal thrillers this one will certainly smack the smirk off your mug. I laughed, held my seat and didn't know how it would turn out until the last damn page. Read this with a cork screw and a nice bottle of brew.
Pam Ward, author
BAD GIRLS BURN SLOW
WANT SOME GET SOME
www.pamwardwriter.com

In Her Defense is billed as a legal thriller and is all that and much more. At the core of the story is an almost impossible to defend murder suspect and case. Built around this tale is a D.C conspiracy, some history, a little love and romance, a whodunit and a lot of off the cuff humor. Add to that a protagonist you gotta love and this is a book you will truly not want to put down. My only disappointment is that the author has only one other book published at this time. Hopefully that will change soon.

Great, great, opening. I heard at one point that the greatest opening line in a novel was "It was a dark and stormy night." I don't know if this is true. It sounds a little too subjective. But Stephen Horn does grab you on the first page.

I like Horn's protaganists, Frank O'Connell here and Phillip Barkley in "Gravity" because they are flawed. We like Spenser and Elvis Cole but after awhile, they are almost too good in both the physical and the metaphysical sense. But O'Connell is a mutt. Even we, the reader, who are supposed to feel sympathy for him, cluck our tongues when we find he walked away from the beautiful girl, the loving (Ay, Laddie, treated him like me own son from Kerry) father-in-law, the worshipping son, the million dollar income for . . . . we don't know why? Frank doesn't know why? Frank's seeing a therapist. Heck he should be seeing a whole staff of therapists. Electro Convulsive Therapy's not enough! Bring on the thorazine, Zoloff and the old standby, Prozac. . . . But then it gets interesting.

The unwinnable case. Leonidas at the Gates of Fire. Horatio at the Bridge. The beautiful victem. The grumpy assistant investigator. (See McSorley in the "Law of Gravity.") The Darth Vader government conspiracy. I haven't done this in 4 or 5 years but I couldn't put it down. Read it in one sitting far into the night. 5 stars. Could be 8. Read "The Law of Gravity" after. Larry Scantlebury

Stephen Horn's first novel has one of the best scenes I have ever had the pleasure to read and visualize. In Chapter 10, the main protagonist, Frank O'Connell, a somewhat down-and-almost-out lawyer, who also happens to be a Vietnam combat veteran, takes on a very snooty, highly pretentious old school attorney by the name of Robert L. Burnside. O'Connell puts the ol' sourpuss neatly in his place after sitting through a sermon of threats by this blowhard barrister to sue our hero for slander. You can almost see the sweat on Burnside's brow and smell the soiling of his neatly pressed pants when O'Connell finishes with him. John "Lilly" Lelankevitch of Evil, Be Gone would really like Frank O'Connell. This book is worth buying just to read this scene (pages 148 to 153).

In a few words, Stephen Horn captured me on the first page and held me until the last. He has that rare ability to spin an outstanding yarn.