• An Innocent Client

  • Joe Dillard, Book 1
  • By: Scott Pratt
  • Narrated by: Tim Campbell
  • Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (4,857 ratings)

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An Innocent Client  By  cover art

An Innocent Client

By: Scott Pratt
Narrated by: Tim Campbell
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Publisher's summary

A preacher is found brutally murdered in a Tennessee motel room.

A beautiful, mysterious young girl is accused.

In this bestselling debut, criminal defense lawyer Joe Dillard has become jaded over the years as he's tried to balance his career against his conscience. Savvy but cynical, Dillard wants to quit doing criminal defense, but he can't resist the chance to represent someone who might actually be innocent. His drug-addicted sister has just been released from prison and his mother is succumbing to Alzheimer's, but Dillard's commitment to the case never wavers despite the personal troubles and professional demands that threaten to destroy him.

Smart and sophisticated, with a plot twist that will leave you shaking your head in wonder, An Innocent Client -- the first in the acclaimed Joe Dillard series -- will also leave you begging for more.

©2012 Scott Pratt (P)2024 Scott Pratt

Critic reviews

Chosen by Bookbub readers as one of the Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time.

"It's Scott Turow and Grisham... The opening chapter is maybe the most compelling I've read in a decade." - Ken Bruen, bestselling author of The Guards

"Pratt knows what he's doing and it shows." - Alafair Burke, acclaimed author of The Wife

"Pratt's richly developed characters are vivid and believable, especially the strong Southern women who fight their male-dominated culture from behind a facade of vulnerability in this brilliantly executed debut." -- Publisher's Weekly

What listeners say about An Innocent Client

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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    2,586
  • 4 Stars
    1,459
  • 3 Stars
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  • 2 Stars
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Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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    2,273
  • 4 Stars
    1,194
  • 3 Stars
    455
  • 2 Stars
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  • 1 Stars
    106

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great Legal Thriller!

An Innocent Client is Book 1 in Scott Pratt's Joe Dillard legal thriller series. It is superbly written and narrated. Joe Dillard is an ex-Army Ranger lawyer who never wanted to be a defense attorney but went into the business because working for the local prosecutor pays so little. With his wife Caroline and he having two children before he finished law school he has been stuck in his private practice for years and now that their son is in college with a scholarship and their daughter a high school senior with a promised scholarship, he and Caroline are working toward getting enough money to afford to work as a prosecutor. Caroline is his paralegal.

Joe has a history of capital murder cases and is the best criminal defense attorney in the northeastern Tennessee where he practices. Most of his capital cases are with indigent clients assigned him by judges and the state pays him $100 per day which is not allowing him to save the money his family needs. Everything changes when he is offered $250,000 plus expenses to defend a beautiful young female client arrested on a murder charge. An Innocent Client is about that case. The state's case is very week and the client claims innocence. The offer is too good to turn down. This novel is about that case. The characters are well developed and very vivid.

The Innocent Client is not just a good first book for a new author, it is a great suspense/thriller novel. I recommend it.

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81 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Very Cool. Just GreatLegal Thriller.

Looking for the kind of legal thriller that Scott Turow used to write? Here's a guy NOT PREACHING his ideological message. Here's a nifty noir voice. I just listened to Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon where the hard-boiled detective got invented. Scott Pratt's in that league. Like Hammett he's writing straight entertainment while playing the various techniques of fiction like a jazz pianist pulls in the riffs and chords you expect from hands that can find the dark a well as light keys.

Tim Campbell's created this ensemble cast with same sort of note-perfect sense as Pratt. Did I like it? I just downloads the next Joe Dillard book. Wadda-you think?

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57 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Brilliant Debut

This book is book one in the Joe Dillard Series. Joe is a cynical burned out defense attorney who keeps saying he will quit law in a year. All he wants is one innocent client.

The story takes place in rural Tennessee. A preacher is murdered after a visit to a strip club. The club owner hires Dillard to defend the club waitress, Angel Christian, who has been charged with the murder. Dillard’s personal life is in chaos, but he carries on with the defense.

The book is well written. I understand this is Pratt’s first book. For a debut book this is an excellent and well-crafted story. The portrayal of a cynical burned out defense attorney is realistic. The characters are well developed and are believable. Pratt has created a male-dominated southern culture for the story. The plot has some twists and turns and there is enough action as well as suspenseful courtroom drama to keep the reader’s attention. I did note that Pratt has created several strong women that are key to the story.

Tim Campbell does an excellent job narrating the story. Campbell is an opera singer, actor, voice over artist and audiobook narrator.

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45 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Awful in every sense

I wanted to like this first legal thriller in a series, but have nothing good to say about it. I enjoy learning more about the criminal or civil justice systems (Turow, Grisham, Martini), but this book was predictable with no thrill at all. I kept listening thinking it might improve and ended up furious that I wasted so much time. The narration was not good either. His change of voice for different characters was terrible.

I rarely give a 1 star review. I am probably too generous at times reviewing books. I will probably be stricter with my stars going forward.

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31 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Pretty good "Who did it"

I LOVED this narrator. He was so easy to listen to and even the female narrations were not awkward, as they can sometimes be. This storyline was easy to follow and had all elements, that made it the perfect amount of suspense and drama. I was never bored listening and never felt like I missed any of the plot, throughout the entire book.

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19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great Story + Terrible Narration = Refund

This book was one that I know would have been great with the right narrator. The story and plot lines coupled with character development were all there. But the narrator was...just...awful.
It sounded like someone trying very hard to ruin the book with a semi-autonomous monotone. This was very difficult to listen to, and was even more painful considering that as a listener paying attention to this story, it was actually a very interesting and intriguing story.

WHO ARE THE PEOPLE GIVING THIS READER RAVE REVIEWS? ARE THEY PAID TO MISLEAD?

The book is a great story, but the narrative made it less than tolerable to listen to.

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18 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Five stars

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would recommend this book and have recommended this book.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Well, Joe Dillard, of course!

Which character – as performed by Tim Campbell – was your favorite?

Again, Joe Dillard

Any additional comments?

I have read all of Scott Pratt's books in the Joe Dillard series and another of his books, Justice Redeemed. I found them entertaining and interesting. I really don't like the fact that I see only one person's rating when I'm browsing for a book -- perhaps it's the last posted rating. This book received one star by the last person, I guess, who rated it. That is very misleading. Unless you open it up and read the reviews, ONE review with one star ... well, that's just not indicative of the book's entertainment value. Sometimes when reading a bad review by certain readers, I know if they don't like it, I probably will. But that's because I have so many books and read so many reviews, I guess. Anyway, in my humble opinion, a one-star rating does not do this book justice.

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18 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Lawyer with personal demons to fight

great story, good development of characters, and a great ending. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars? I think the reader could have given a little more variation in tonality to the main character. Don't get me wrong. I think he did a great job, and did variations with the women, judges, and rednecks superbly. It is just it could have been tweaked a little bit in the voicing of the main character, which was otherwise excellent.

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Cheesy and Robotically Read

Didn't love the characters - very misogynistic. Story line was really good. Maybe it was just how it was read that it seemed cheesy and at times the voice sounded robotic.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Whine, whine, whine

This book is pretty well written; however "Joe" was just too whiney for me to enjoy the story. Joe is a successful defense attorney who is tired of defending scumbags. Who put a gun to his head and forced him to practice that type of law? Does he volunteer at a legal clinic or quit to work for a charitable organization? No, he whines about wanting one innocent client while earning enough money to do whatever he likes. He has strained relationships with his mother & sister, but never made an effort to resolve his childhood issues and rebuild the family bonds. I like flawed characters but not those who wallow in self pity.

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11 people found this helpful