Goodbye Girl

This is the eighteenth Swyteck novel since The Pardon (1994), and its just as good as the rest. Grippando keeps coming up with complex and timely cases, and this one is first-rate. Booklist A contentious intellectual piracy case leads to an unsolved murder, and Jack Swytecks clienta pop music iconis the accused killer. Piracy costs the movie and music industry billions. No one has been able to stop it. But that wont stop Miami criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck. His latest client, Imani Nichols, is a Grammy-winning popstar whose career has skyrocketed. Despite her success, shes the most underpaid superstar on the planet because of an onerous record contract she signed as a teenager with her now ex-husband Shaky Nichols, who has made himself rich off her royalties. Preferring to see thieves profit from her music than let her ex-husband pocket one more dime, Imani takes to social media and tells her millions of fans to go pirate and download her music illegally. Her hardball tactic leads to scorched-earth litigation, and now she needs Jacks help. The case takes a deadly turn when salacious allegations of infidelity send Imani and Shaky down a path of mutual assured destruction, each implicating the other in the unsolved murder of Imanis extra-marital lover twelve years ago. Tyler McCormick died of asphyxiation, and his body was found in Biscayne Bay, chained to a piling with the words "goodbye girl" impressed on his chest. Despite their fierce denials, Imani and Shakey are both indicted for murder, leading to a sensational trial that exposes shocking secrets about their failed marriage, their cut-throat business partnership, and Imanis astonishing success. Yet as Jack discovers, uncovering the truth about the killing and the cryptic goodbye girl wont just exonerate or convict his client, her ex, and their music empire. It may shape the future of the entire recording industry.