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Contempt
A Civic Noir Novel
LeRenyae Watkins
Baltimore, 2006. Defense attorney Shawn Davidson inherits his dead father’s murder trial and discovers the case was never built to find the truth. It was built to protect the people who own it.
★★★★
“Smart, compelling thriller with strong momentum and themes that feel painfully relevant.”
★★★★
“Such a great read. The story takes many twists and turns, keeping you on the edge of your seat the whole time. For lovers of Scandal or The Wire, this is your read.”
★★★★★
“The story unfolds in such a vivid, cinematic way that it felt like watching a movie play out in my mind.”
★★★★
“An impressively crafted and thoroughly gripping thriller. Clever, tense, and genuinely hard to put down.”
“Your name is either clean, or it’s useful.”
From Contempt
Official Trailer
Cold Read
Excerpts from Contempt
Most collapses don't announce themselves. They keep their appointments.
Chapter 1 · Shawn · prose
The Score
A novel with its own soundtrack.
Eighteen original tracks, composed for the book. Character-driven. Chapter-mapped. Press play, then read.
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Contempt
Legal Thriller / Civic Noir
“A deputy mayor is dead. An eighteen-year-old sits in county on prints from a gun that went missing weeks before the murder. The attorney who built the defense died on the courthouse steps before the trial began — leaving his son to inherit the case, the firm, and the files that were never supposed to surface.”
Baltimore, 2006. A deputy mayor is shot dead at a community rally. An eighteen-year-old Italian-American kid from Conkling Street sits in county because his fingerprints were on a gun that vanished from his family’s restaurant weeks before the killing. The State has a timeline, a motive built on one public outburst, and a city that needs someone to blame.
Read moreAcknowledgements
This book exists because of you.
Thank you for waiting. Thank you for watching patiently. None of this moves without the people who believed in the work before there was anything to show for it.
To Keasha — for always encouraging me to never stop writing. You kept saying it before I believed it.
The Circle
Jeremy, Eric, Muffyn, Lauren, AJ — for continuous support, from the first draft to launch day.
The Readers
Quiana, Ashley, Morgan, Linda — for stepping in to put eyes on the story, providing reviews and honest feedback that made this book what it is.