Hello.

Welcome to Inside the cover.

I am your host Ted Ayres and I am thrilled to have this opportunity to share my perspectives on books and those who write them.

If you are a regular viewer, thank you.

And if this is your first time, we hope you will come back to PBS Kansas to join us on a regular basis.

Tonight, I want to feature a writer who has worked his way into my pantheon of favorite writers.

His name is Steve Martini, and I consider his novels to be among the very best of the lawyer genre, so popular in fiction writing today.

Martini was born on February 28, 1946, in San Francisco.

He graduated from the University of Santa Cruz in 1968 with a degree in government.

Martinis first career was in journalism, working as a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the largest legal newspaper in the country, covering the state, the local courts and the Civic Center.

In 1970, he became the newspaper's first correspondent in Sacramento and later its bureau chief.

During this time, he attended law school at night, and in 1974 took his J.D.

degree from the University of the Pacific's McGeorge School of Law.

He was admitted to the bar in January of 1975.

Martini practiced law both privately as well as for public agencies.

He also worked as an administrative hearing officer, a supervising hearing officer, and as an administrative law judge.

And for a time, he served as deputy director of the state Office of Administrative Hearings.

I would suggest that this journalism and legal background has served Martini so very well as a writer.

Compelling evidence was his second novel and introduced his serious protagonist, Paul Madriani.

This book was a national bestseller and it earned Martini a critical and popular following.

There are 15 books in this series, as you can see on the screen, and I have read all of them except for The Secret Partner, which I have been unable to locate at the library or on the Internet.

In this regard, I highly recommend the series be read in order as the books build on each other and tell the developing story of Madrianis personal and professional lives.

Martini writes With a very real sense and understanding of the courtroom trial procedures, legal strategies, evidentiary matters, attorney maneuvering.

John Grisham says that Martini writes With a agile, episodic style of a lawyer quick on his feet.

Paul Madriani and his contrarian and irrepressible law partner, Harry Hines, provide an accurate and unvarnished view of the practice of law and the business of life.

Martinis books are page turners, particularly in the depths of trial.

And his books always seem to have a surprise conclusion.

I also appreciate Martini's commentary on politics, media, society and life itself.

Let me briefly summarize three of the books in the series for you.

The Judge was copyrighted in 1995 when Judge Armando Acosta is indicted on charges of soliciting a prostitute.

He turns his legal well-being over to Madriaini Although over the years, Acosta has been nothing but a pain in Paul's ass.

The arraignment was copyrighted in 2002 after a lawyer friend was killed along with his client in a hail of gunfire outside the federal courthouse in San Diego, Madriani takes on another client who he believes is involved at the edges of the double murder.

Guardian of Lies was copyrighted in 2009. Who could have ever guessed that a chance meeting with a young woman in a grocery store would have led her to become a client in a murder case?

Or that the quest for evidence in that case and the search for a witness in Latin America would have ensnared Madriani and Hines in an attempted nuclear assault on American soil.

That's our show.

We hope we have held your attention and perhaps introduced you to some new reading adventures.

Good night.

And see you next time.

Keep a book in your hands.