Bodily Harm (David Sloane Series #3) »

Robert Dugoni graduated from Stanford University with a degree in journalism and clerked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times befor attending the UCLA School of Law. He has practiced law in San Francisco and Seattle for 17 years. In 1999 he left full-time practice to return to writing and is a two-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Award. He lives with his wife and two children in Seattle.

Bodily Harm opens with a big win for David Sloane and his new partner, Tom Pendergrass, in a malpractice case centered on the death of a young child. But on the heels of this seeming victory, an unlikely character — toy designer Kyle Horgan — comes forward to tell Sloane that he’s gotten it all wrong: Horgan’s the one who’s truly responsible for the little boy’s death and possibly others — not the pediatrician Sloane has just proven guilty.
Ordinarily, Sloane might have dismissed such a person as a crackpot, but something about this case has always troubled him — something that he couldn’t quite pinpoint. When Sloane tries to follow up with Horgan, he finds the man’s apartment a shambles — ransacked by unknown perpetrators. Horgan has vanished without a trace. Together with his longtime investigative partner Charles Jenkins, Sloane re-examines his clients’ son’s death and digs deeper into Horgan’s claims, forcing him to enter the billion-dollar, cutthroat toy industry. As Sloane gets closer to the truth, he trips a wire that leads to a shocking chain of events that nearly destroys him.
To get to the bottom of it all and find justice for the families harmed, Sloane must keep in check his overwhelming desire for revenge. Full of nail-bitingly tense action scenes as well as edge-of-your-seat courtroom drama, Bodily Harm finds Robert Dugoni at the very top of his game.

Publishers Weekly

Dugoni offers an awkward union of classic revenge tale and courtroom drama in his third legal thriller to feature Seattle attorney David Sloane (after Wrongful Death). When eccentric toy designer Kyle Horgan claims that he was responsible for a young child's death in a wrongful death case, not respected pediatrician Peter Douvalidis, against whom Sloane is about to win a massive judgment, Sloane has cause for serious concern. Already conflicted about elements of the case, Sloane becomes alarmed at the revelation of a second child's death eerily similar to the one blamed on Dr. Douvalidis and more so when Horgan vanishes. Sloane's link with Horgan and his reputation as “the lawyer who doesn't lose” make him and his family a target for an ex-CIA assassin, Anthony Stenopolis. Effective courtroom scenes compensate only in part for Sloane's covert search for Stenopolis, which is a fitfully competent assembly of familiar thriller clichés. 7-city author tour. (May)