Mark Gimenez Books in Order

If you want Scott Fenney’s full story arc: The Color of Law → Accused → The Absence of Guilt → Tribes
If you enjoy professor-led legal adventures: Con Law → End of Days
If you prefer standalone Texas legal dramas: The Perk → The Common Lawyer → The Governor's Wife → The Case Against William
If you’re in the mood for a high-stakes kidnapping thriller: The Abduction / Saving Grace
If you’re choosing something for younger readers (~9–12): Parts & Labor: The Adventures of Max Dugan

Mark Gimenez grew up in La Marque, a small city in Galveston County on the Texas Gulf Coast, where football, family and local politics were everyday life. Those early years in Texas would later become the backdrop for many of his novels, from Dallas courtrooms to dusty Hill Country towns.

He headed to Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) in San Marcos, earning a B.A. in political science with honors. College didn’t just point him toward law; a creative writing class also planted the idea that he might have stories worth telling. For the moment, though, the safe choice was law school.

From there he went north to Indiana to attend Notre Dame Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1980. Soon after, he joined a large Dallas law firm and spent a decade climbing the ranks, eventually becoming a partner. Long hours, high-paying corporate clients and the pressure of big cases gave him an inside view of how power and money shape the justice system.

Somewhere in those years, the writing bug that had bitten in college came back. A conversation with his son about To Kill a Mockingbird and whether such an injustice could still happen helped spark the idea for a modern legal drama set in Dallas. He began to imagine a wealthy lawyer forced to choose between his lifestyle and his conscience.

That idea became The Color of Law, his debut legal thriller about A. Scott Fenney, a hotshot attorney ordered to defend a poor Black prostitute accused of killing a senator’s son. The book hit the New York Times bestseller list and introduced readers around the world to Gimenez’s mix of courtroom tension, moral choices and Texas flavor.

He followed it with standalones like The Abduction, a high-stakes search for a kidnapped granddaughter led by a haunted former Green Beret; The Perk, about a big-city lawyer who returns to a small Hill Country town and a long-buried murder; and The Common Lawyer, which tracks an Austin traffic-ticket attorney pulled into a billionaire’s deadly secret. Along the way he kept returning to Scott Fenney in Accused, The Absence of Guilt and Tribes, and launched another series with Con Law and End of Days, starring constitutional law professor John Bookman.

Gimenez’s novels have been translated into many languages and have appeared on bestseller lists in countries including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, India and South Africa. In 2008, his alma mater’s College of Liberal Arts honored him with a distinguished alumni award, a full-circle moment for the kid who once left Galveston County wondering what might be possible.

Not all of his work is aimed at adults. With his son Cole he co-wrote Parts & Labor: The Adventures of Max Dugan, a middle-grade novel about a boy grappling with grief, bullies and a strange new neighbor who changes everything. It’s a reminder that his interest in family, loss and love runs through his fiction even when there are no courtrooms in sight.

He still lives in Texas, outside Fort Worth, balancing a solo law practice with writing. His research often starts with the law — constitutional questions, criminal procedure, the gray spaces where rules and real life collide — and then dives into the details of places like Waco, Dallas or Fredericksburg. What keeps him coming back to the page are the people at the center of those conflicts: lawyers, judges, parents and kids trying to do the right thing when the stakes are painfully high.

Today, he continues to write stories that ask a simple but tough question: when the law, money and politics all pull in different directions, what does justice really look like for ordinary people?