The Secret Agenda

Secret Agent is the title of a book that will be released by SterlingHouse on July 30, 2009. It is the first in a series of stories about a Portland, Oregon civil trial lawyer Barry O'Shea. Each book in the series is a story about interesting and moving situations that give rise to a civil trial, a challenge that is almost unheard of in the genre of legal mysteries. The background of this book is a mysterious middle-eastern mystic and the cult of his followers who located on an abandoned ranch in the barren deserts of north, central Oregon in the late 1970s. The story develops with the events that occur through the antics of this strange cult as it progresses with it's secret agenda. Adding to the mystery is a revealing article written by the editor of a local newspaper that leads to startling and fascinating libel trial with an unusual ending. The reader will be riveted to the principal character, Barry O'Shea, as he weaves his way through the antics of the cult and its members into the defense of the editor and the newspaper in the libel trial.

I have written two sequels to the Secret Agent that have yet to be published. Vital to the Defense is the second and is scheduled to be released sometime in 2010. In it Barry O'Shea is faced with an entirely different factual situation, a huge fire in a south eastern Oregon plywood mill, and ruthless actions of the mill owner and his female CFO that predated the fire. Again all of this leads to a dramatic and revealing civil trial.

The third book is entitled The Second District and will probably not be published until 2011. This story is about a famous actor who becomes a cattle rancher in south eastern Oregon and decides to run for Congress from the second district in Oregon. He hires Barry O'Shea when he becomes embroiled in legal tangles with the sitting Congressman. Those tangles ultimately involved a recount of the election and the trial by a three judge panel on a contest of the recount. Again the trial ends in a surprising way.

I will report more about these three beginning books in the Barry O'Shea series as the dates of their release near.