Rich Skalstad has been an attorney for over thirty years. Lawyers in Love is the first book in The Jones Trilogy, a noir composition about murder and infidelity in Bankey, Donne, Dixon, Ransom & Crow—Spokane’s oldest and most prestigious law firm.
The characters whom Mr. Skalstad has created in the lawyers Bobbi Jones, Al Sorensen, and Jack Bankey are original and crisp. Mr. Skalstad deftly employs his experience in the trial and appellate courts of Washington state, and his view from his times as a judge pro tempore in municipal and district courts in Spokane County, to create a complete and authentic experience for the reader.
The murder and betrayal in Lawyers in Love, invite the further murder and betrayal of Charon’s Keep and Girl from Carcosa, the second and third books of The Jones Trilogy. The JonesTrilogy is in the noir tradition of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce—it is about what happens when our morality collides with the desire we are unable to deny.