To Kill a Lawyer

I’ll admit, I was skeptical when *To Kill a Lawyer* landed in my queue. Legal thrillers aren’t exactly scarce, and the premise—a high-powered fix-it lawyer nearly assassinated at a party—felt like a retread of lesser imitations. But McMillian’s razor-sharp prose and George Newbern’s hypnotic narration turned this into one of the most compulsively listenable thrillers I’ve heard in months. Newbern doesn’t just narrate; he *inhabits* Walker, a man who’s equal parts charming, repellent, and tragically unaware of his own unraveling. His voice drips with the kind of Southern aristocratic swagger that makes you believe Walker could talk his way out of anything—until he can’t. The audiobook’s pacing is flawless, too. McMillian’s plotting is tight enough to keep you guessing, but he never sacrifices atmosphere for shock value. The mansion setting, all chandeliers and whispered secrets, feels like a character itself, and the production team nails the eerie, claustrophobic mood. That said, the story isn’t without its friction. The first act meanders a touch too long in Walker’s self-congratulatory monologues, and the Georgia techbro subplot feels shoehorned in, like McMillian wanted to nod to modern crimes but forgot to tie it into the main narrative. Newbern’s performance occasionally stumbles over some of the more technical legal jargon, and the dialogue occasionally veers into parody territory—imagine a Southern gentleman grilling suspects with the gravitas of a used-car salesman. But these are minor quibbles in a book that otherwise delivers the goods: a morally murky protagonist, a plot that feels both inevitable and surprising, and a narrator who makes you root for a man you should despise. By the time the final twist lands—delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer—you’ll be begging for a sequel. Walker’s fate feels like the end of an era, and that’s a damn good reason to hit play.