Her Cold Justice
Her Cold Justice (Keera Duggan #3)
By: Robert Dugoni
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2026]
“‘The Irish Brawler’s daughter against the Queen of Circumstantial Evidence.’”
For those who love a good legal thriller, this series has been quite enjoyable. Dugoni sought to create a novel that “blended legal thriller, police procedural, and family dynamics” and he did a great job of that in this series.
I wouldn’t like to read a bunch of legal thrillers back to back but I love sprinkling them in periodically. There is great suspense in seeing a defense or prosecution unfold their plan and reveal their evidence. And of course, we love the obligatory “gotcha!” moments when they pull out their secret weapon!
The majority of the book takes place in the courtroom so if you don’t like books like that, you probably wouldn’t enjoy this one, but if you feel a little thrill picturing a lawyer say emphatically ‘DIDN’T YOU!!’ then you’ll probably want to give this series a try.
You could read this as a standalone for the case part of it. But to better understand the family dynamics you’ll want to start from the beginning.
I wouldn’t call this a beach read or a casual read in that I didn’t find it mindless. Whenever I picked it up while there were distractions I had a harder time with it, following the arguments and anticipating what direction the lawyers were trying to go. This book required at least some focus.
As with great legal thrillers, the reader has a general idea of the direction of their arguments, but we don’t know exactly how they’re going to convince the jury to go their way.
Weaving in the chess aspects to this story (Keera was a chess prodigy) showcases the strategy involved in trying and defending court cases, even down to what clothes they wear, what infractions to say that will be stricken from the record but not from the jury’s minds, what emotions to convey or hide, body language, all of it!
The chess lesson in this one was: it ain’t over til it’s over.
I’m not sure there were really any ‘shockers’ or surprising reveals in this one, but for me, the suspense is more in the wondering if justice will be done. Are the things able to be proven in court and will the jury see it the way you want them to? Nothing is guaranteed in the court room. So just like chess, you know the possible moves that could be made, but you don’t know what order they will happen— which strategy will win?
Contrary to the last book where Keera is defending a narcissist, Her Cold Justice is a story that makes you like the person Keera is defending and I was glad for that. You still don’t know what part Michael, the defendant, played in everything, but you at least WANT to root for him. You actually feel like you’re rooting for justice in this one; it felt like a fight against a corrupt system for a potentially wrongly accused person so you get invested in the outcome pretty quickly.
While Michael doesn’t have a completely clean legal or behavioral record, his case is something we all fear— what if we are accused of something we didn’t do but the evidence points to us. How do you prove your innocence?
The case at hand is a double homicide of a suspected drug smuggler and his girlfriend. The male victim was a coworker and friend of Michael’s and he was the last person to see him alive after getting a ride home from work late one night.
“‘He’s been charged with being part of a drug ring smuggling in large quantities of fentanyl and other heavy narcotics’” besides being the primary murder suspect.
For those reading the whole series, Michael is the nephew to JP Harrison, Keera’s private investigator, so we also have investment in that we really like JP and we want justice for his family.
The primary problem: Michael and Keera’s legal team are up against the fearless, no-nonsense prosecutor Kim Tran (this may have been changed to Anh Tran in the final publication).
Tran, after witnessing her parents’ murders as a young child, grew up to be a prosecutor and was “either infamous or famous depending on whom you spoke to.” She was often compared to Batman because of her origin story and her devotion to fighting for justice and putting criminals away.
“If Tran was the prosecutor, they could expect the charges to be extreme— and the consequences for JP’s nephew grave.”
“this was Tran. Within the rules, but skirting the edges, and ruthless.”
We discover that Tran, Queen of Circumstantial Evidence, had a penchant for getting convictions even if the evidence required inferences instead of eyewitness testimony or forensic proof.
After reading Dugoni’s author’s note, I liked this book even more knowing his intentions.
He says that he read an article that surprisingly named prosecutors as the most powerful people in the judiciary— rather than the expected ‘judges'.’
We discover in Her Cold Justice:
“Overcharging was just one abuse of that [prosecuting] power. Another was penalizing a defendant who refused to plea and exercised his constitutional right to make the prosecutor prove the charges to a jury. Withholding or hiding potentially exculpatory evidence was yet another form of abuse and, in egregious cases, so, too, was manufacturing evidence.”
I was definitely reminded of the nonfiction book I read titled Reforming Criminal Justice by Matthew Martens that also described the power of prosecutors and their immunity from being sued for trial misconduct.
This wasn’t included in Dugoni’s book but Martens talked about how prosecutors, while negotiating plea bargains, often require defendants to waive their right to Brady material— meaning if they plead guilty, they can’t change their plea if they find out later the prosecutors had exculpatory evidence that would prove their innocence and some states don’t require lawyers to share exculpatory evidence before trial. Prosecutors can also compel witnesses to testify in court but the defense can’t.
Prosecutors truly do have a lot of power that may not always go unchecked.
I would highly, highly recommend the book Reforming Criminal Justice to see the nonfictional statistics and examples of the problems in our legal system. It was the first book I had read that actually gave detailed explanations and non-partisan examples of the injustices instead of just proclaiming loudly ‘the system is rigged!’ with no further description.
Her Cold Justice is a fictionalized account that explores the ‘what if a prosecutor abused their power?’ of these real problems in our system and I found that aspect very compelling as I read this book.
As far as the family dynamics part of this book, I would say it’s mostly just a continuation of the development of Keera and her dad, Patsy’s, relationship. I really love watching them interact with one another and seeing Patsy’s support of her.
Keera’s sisters play a pretty minor role so I don’t really feel like Dugoni is trying to build up any of the sibling relationships, at least yet. Maggie seems to have more personality than Ella— “Maggie served as the firm’s receptionist, paralegal, and alarmist. There wasn’t a flame she couldn’t turn into a blaze, given the chance”— so maybe she will serve a bigger role in the future; I wouldn’t mind seeing more of them.
Keera’s budding romance with Rossi is tended to a little bit in this book but from book one to now has been a very slow process. Considering the complications it would bring to both of their jobs since detectives work with prosecutors not defense attorneys, I am anxious to see them take their relationship to the next level to see what challenges they face in the workplace and how they manage them. I’m fairly certain that’s coming soon.
But not soon enough…
Dugoni’s author’s note says he has a great idea “for the next edition, a prequel of sorts” so I’m guessing we’re not moving forward in the next book, but circling around to the beginning. I don’t know if that means we get more of Patsy’s earlier career and perhaps the case where the bird testifies on the stand, or if it will be the backstory to Keera’s prior relationship and cause to leave her job in prosecution. I’m not typically a fan of prequels, so we shall see how it goes.
Recommendation
Unless you hate legal thrillers, I would recommend this book and this series as a whole. Dugoni does a good job writing the court room drama and coming up with compelling moral dilemmas or case possibilities. I also like the added layer of family dynamics between Keera and her recovering alcoholic lawyer dad who is helping her succeed as a defense attorney.
If you want to start this series from the beginning check out Her Deadly Game.
If you aren’t interested in legal thrillers, I would still recommend Robert Dugoni as an author and would direct you to pretty much any of this other books/series to try!
If you love thrillers and chess (and serial killers) I would highly recommend Steven James’ Patrick Bowers series— the first book is called The Pawn. It’s so good.
[Content Advisory: 2 f-words, 32 s-words; references to sexual encounters related to the case and brought up in the court room]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
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