Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana are a combustible mix – but if they combust they could ruin their professional careers. Passionately attracted to each other, they are equally passionate defenders of their clients even when their interests are completely adversarial.

Set all this tension against the sultry background of a Miami riddled with crime and corruption, drowning in drugs, illegal immigrants and shady deals, and simmering with a melting-pot clash of cultures and you have a recipe for a hotly explosive series of legal thrillers by Barbara Parker. You can find them on Barbara’s author page.

In the debut novel, Suspicion of Innocence, Gail Connor is a fast-rising attorney in a major law firm, about to make partner—until her life is derailed by the discovery of her sister’s murdered body and the possibility that Gail is the prime suspect. Gail must fight for her life as she gets a first-hand look at the dark underside of the legal system she is pledged to uphold.

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Barbara Parker was a dear friend, a dedicated professional writer and a beloved and esteemed client whose untimely passing was and remains a source of anguish to all who knew her. Trained as a lawyer, she worked as a prosecutor with the state attorney’s office in Dade County, Florida before moving into a private practice specializing in real estate and family law. Suspicion of Innocence, published in 1994, was her first legal thriller. It was followed by seven more titles featuring her two lawyer protagonists and sometime lovers, Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana. Suspicion of Innocence was a finalist for a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award, and two other Gail and Anthony novels, Suspicion of Deceit and Suspicion of Betrayal, were New York Times bestsellers. She died in March 2009, at age 62. Too young. Far, far too young.

RC

Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana are a combustible mix – but if they combust they could ruin their professional careers. Passionately attracted to each other, they are equally passionate defenders of their clients even when their interests are completely adversarial.

Set all this tension against the sultry background of a Miami riddled with crime and corruption, drowning in drugs, illegal immigrants and shady deals, and simmering with a melting-pot clash of cultures and you have a recipe for a hotly explosive series of legal thrillers by Barbara Parker. You can find them on Barbara’s author page.

In the debut novel, Suspicion of Innocence, Gail Connor is a fast-rising attorney in a major law firm, about to make partner—until her life is derailed by the discovery of her sister’s murdered body and the possibility that Gail is the prime suspect. Gail must fight for her life as she gets a first-hand look at the dark underside of the legal system she is pledged to uphold.

******************************

Barbara Parker was a dear friend, a dedicated professional writer and a beloved and esteemed client whose untimely passing was and remains a source of anguish to all who knew her.  Trained as a lawyer, she worked as a prosecutor with the state attorney’s office in Dade County, Florida before moving into a private practice specializing in real estate and family law. Suspicion of Innocence, published in 1994, was her first legal thriller. It was followed by seven more titles featuring her two lawyer protagonists and sometime lovers, Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana. Suspicion of Innocence was a finalist for a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award, and two other Gail and Anthony novels, Suspicion of Deceit and Suspicion of Betrayal, were New York Times bestsellers. She died in March 2009, at age 62. Too young. Far, far too young.

RC

Bestselling author Barbara Parker died on Saturday, March 8 2009. The cause was cancer which, after a blessed couple of years of remission that freed her to relaunch her writing career, metastasized. She was 62 years old.

She was best known for a series of thrillers, commencing with Suspicion of Innocence, set in Miami and starring attorneys Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana. Fans followed their stormy relationship from book to book as Connor’s Cuban-born lover disappeared and reappeared on mysterious and dangerous missions having to do with Cuban politics. Their on-again off-again romance was the subject of intense speculation by readers wondering if the dark man of mystery would ever settle down.

I represented Barbara from her very first book and never once saw her in any other mood but upbeat. Her eyes perpetually twinkled with self-deprecating humor. Her head was always cocked with curiosity like a puppy listening to a whistle out of the range of human hearing. She took in everything and everything was of intense interest to her both personally and professionally. She was tethered to a notebook and I never knew when some random comment uttered by me or a stranger would provoke a frenzy of scribbling that would eventually find its way into one of her books.

She was a writer’s writer. Some years ago I visited her in her home town of Ft. Lauderdale, where I had booked a reservation in a fancy restaurant. She told me to meet her at a theatre where she was researching her current novel. She emerged in jeans and denim workshirt, hair and face covered with dust from clambering around the theatre’s flies. I asked her if she wanted me to take her home to change for dinner. “No, I’ll just change in my car,” she said. She disappeared into her car and I saw clothes flying as if tossed in a dryer. She stepped out beautifully dressed, impeccably groomed, and laughing her girlish laughter. I will sorely miss that laughter.

An obituary by Oline H. Cogdill appears in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Before she became sick she arranged for E-Reads to reissue her Gail and Anthony novels. Nothing could give me greater pleasure to pay this tribute to her, and I know her fans will say the same.

Richard Curtis