Tony Lord Books in Order

Tony Lord’s series centers on a celebrated San Francisco defense attorney whose adult poise is built on a teenage trauma he has never fully escaped. The two novels follow him from the glare of national politics to the claustrophobia of his Midwestern hometown, always circling the same questions of guilt, loyalty, and the stories people tell about violence.

In Private Screening, Tony is called in after presidential hopeful James Kilcannon is shot on live television in front of rock star Stacy Tarrant. Tony agrees to defend the gunman, a damaged Vietnam veteran whose case forces the country to relive old political wounds. The trial turns on questions of motive, media responsibility, and how far a defense lawyer should go when the facts and public anger don’t line up.

Just when that ordeal seems over, a new threat appears. A masked figure who calls himself Phoenix kidnaps Stacy’s manager and the wife of a powerful media owner, then hijacks the airwaves to stage his own televised “trial.” Tony and Stacy are dragged back into the spotlight, trying to negotiate with a man who understands ratings as well as he understands fear. The book shifts between courtroom strategy and high‑stakes hostage drama, with Tony caught between his instincts as an advocate and his obligation to keep people alive.

Silent Witness turns the focus inward. As a teenager in Lake City, Ohio, Tony was the prime suspect in the brutal murder of his girlfriend, Alison Taylor. Cleared but never truly forgiven, he left town and remade himself elsewhere. Almost three decades later, his childhood friend Sue begs him to return and defend her husband, Sam Robb, a beloved coach accused of killing a female student who was carrying his child.

Back in Lake City, Tony is forced to walk the same streets where people once whispered his name, this time as a lawyer instead of an accused boy. The new case echoes the old one in unsettling ways: small‑town gossip, jealousies, an ambitious prosecutor, and a community that prefers simple answers to complicated truths. As the trial unfolds, long‑buried evidence about Alison’s death resurfaces, pushing Tony to ask whether justice was ever served for her—or for himself.

Together, the Tony Lord novels blend legal suspense with the emotional weight of coming home to the place that first broke you.

Readers who start with Private Screening will see how Tony learns to operate under relentless public scrutiny, while Silent Witness shows what happens when that practiced cool collides with the unresolved pain of his youth. Both books work on their own, but in combination they offer a fuller picture of a lawyer who knows that every verdict carries a personal cost.