COST of ARROGANCE (Jake Clearwater #1) by H. Mitchell Caldwell






Published in October of 2021 by Nine Innings Press.

Cost of Arrogance features Jake Clearwater who used to be a prosecutor. However, rough and tumble office politics encouraged him to take a job as a law professor. He is happy with his choice, but he decides to take on long shot death penalty appeal after being asked by an organization called Death Penalty Project.

The argument in the appeal is that the man on death row is there because of an incompetent defense lawyer in the original trial. The trial was for the murder of a married couple.  The client knew that his lawyer was not doing a good job so he made a spectacle of himself - cursing, yelling and more in front of the jury. Considering that he had already served serious prison time in the past, the jury was only too happy to put this angry felon on death row - after all, if he's this crazy during the trail, it's not hard to imagine that he killed two people. 

Clearwater successfully argues that the defense was incompetent and is assigned as the attorney in the re-trial. In the re-trial he will go against the people in the prosecutor's office where he used to work. The prosecutor in the re-trial will be the man who basically drove him out. 

And that's when things start to get really interesting - and not always in a good way...

The first novel in what is intended to be a series of novels can suffer from too much world-building - establishing all of the intended characters and all of the intended locations that the series could possibly include in its run. Happily, Caldwell does not give in to that temptation.

The courtroom scenes are well done - with the exception of just having too many dramatic moments to interrupt the trial. I can't discuss them without revealing the plot, so just let me say that the author went to the same plot device well one too many times.

That being said, I would be more than happy to read another installment of this series.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  COST of ARROGANCE (Jake Clearwater #1) by H. Mitchell Caldwell.

Note: I received a free Advanced Readers Copy of this book from the publisher so that I could make an honest review. 

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