Irreparable Harm by Melissa Miller

 

The news is dire.  A plane has plowed into a mountainside, killing all aboard.  What could cause such a tragedy?  Mechanical failure?  Pilot error?  Whatever it is, there will be legal implications for the airline, Hemisphere Air.  Sasha McCandless works as a lawyer at the firm representing the airline.  The first lawsuits for the survivors are ready to file the day after the crash.  The airline requests that Sasha head up the team of lawyers who will defend against the suits.  It's a huge career boost for Sasha who is on the cusp of making partner.  That is, a huge boost if she is successful and a career killer if she fails.

As Sasha starts to look into the case, she begins to doubt that Hemisphere is at fault at all.  Instead she believes that the airline has been the victim of terrorists; not terrorists for a cause but terrorists who want to make millions.  They have created software that will incapacitate the manual controls and can send a plane to its doom.  They can sell this software to the airlines for millions if not billions of dollars.  Now those same people have Sasha in their sights.  

Sasha soon finds that the other side is ready to play rough. People involved in the case are killed and Sasha herself is attacked several times.  Luckily, she has help in the form of Leo Connelly, a federal air marshall.  She also has her Krav Maga training which makes her a bad person to attack.  Can Sasha and Leo find the terrorists before they find and put an end to them?

I listened to this novel.  The narrator, Suzanne Fortin, read competently but I would not search out another narration by her.  Her tone was close to a monotone and didn't appreciably change regardless of the action occurring.  In a thriller, the narration should indicate when something major is happening.

Melissa Miller is a former attorney herself.  That gives her legal thrillers the necessary expertise and knowledge of legal procedures that makes them believeable. She has written more than two dozen legal thrillers and this title is the introductory one in the Sasha McCandless series.  This book is recommended for legal thriller readers.