For those of you like Justice Sotomayor who love legal fiction (as in novels, not legal fictions made up out of whole cloth by lawyers when speaking to juries), I have posted my picks for the five best novels of the type on my website, www.CCMambretti.com. Please click on over to the page “Courtroom Drama.” Not counting my novel, THE JUROR HANGS, I would be very interested in knowing if you agree with me.

After noting how many people find this post through search engines and then fail to visit my website, I realize that this is a poor tease. So here's my list (but I still would like to point out that I'm a Ph.D. in literature; my website has what I think is a thought-provoking article on the legal-thriller genre):

Best Legal Fiction (not in any particular ranking)

Dorothy Sayers' Strong Poison
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird
Robert Traver's Anatomy of a Murder
Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men
B.M. Gill's The Twelfth Juror

I also enjoyed reading James Patterson's Judge and Jury, but it was a "guilty pleasure." I do not recommend it, because its depiction of jurors is absurd. (I reviewed it at Amazon.com) and also on this blog many months ago.

I would also recommend my The Juror Hangs. It's a tongue-in-cheek 1950s noir set in my favorite corrupt court, Cook County Criminal Courthouse. It is available from the Amazon Kindle store, the iPhone Stanza app, www.Smashwords.com, and (according to Smashwords) Barnes and Noble online (but I haven't checked there yet). Soon it will be available through Mobipocket at several other online booksellers. If you are interested in a hardcopy (tree-based) edition, please email me. I am thinking about publishing through Lightning Source or another POD in paperback format; however, I need to know there's a demand for it. For info on where to purchase The Juror Hangs, please read my earlier post.