D.A. DeSouza

A death ruled suicide.
A truth no court can prove.

Different Kinds
of Justice

A political and legal thriller by D.A. DeSouza and L.Y. Lim

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Cover of Different Kinds of Justice, showing unbalanced golden scales beneath a shaft of light
Two sides of the law. One truth. No clean answers.

The case

Everyone has a motive.
Only the evidence is silent.

State Senator Lawrence T. Smith is found dead in his Capitol office, the target of a corruption investigation cut short by an apparent self-inflicted gunshot.

For lead prosecutor Mei Lin Chan, the death turns a dangerous case into a personal reckoning. Seven days earlier, an anonymous warning appeared on her chair. She chose not to report it. Now Smith is dead, an unknown caller says she made the right choice, and every secret she has kept threatens to surface.

Police Captain Bart Hunter is under pressure to accept the evidence in front of him: Smith's gun, Smith's fingerprints and a typed farewell on Smith's laptop. But a missing phone, a private dinner and a crime scene that fits too perfectly keep pulling him back.

As their parallel investigations converge, Mei Lin and Bart enter a world of political fixers, hidden loyalties and carefully traded favors. Everyone has something to protect. Knowing what happened is one thing. Proving it in court is another.

“Knowing and proving are different things.”

From chapter one

The Weight of Ambition

You may think he is in trouble, but he is not the only one in jeopardy. Be careful how deeply you want to dig.

Seven days ago, the note had appeared on Mei Lin's chair: no envelope, no signature, just a neatly block-printed warning on a folded sheet of copy paper. She had opened it, read it once, read it again, then sealed it in an evidence bag and buried it in the back of her bottom desk drawer, beneath a ream of paper and a pile of takeout menus.

Seven mornings now. The same question surfacing each time: “Why haven't you reported it?”

Because reporting it would trigger an investigation. Because investigations meant questions about her cases, her methods, her ambitions. Because she couldn't be sure the threat was made on State Senator Lawrence T. Smith's behalf, even though he'd become her principal focus lately.

Then her lead investigator entered her office. “Senator Smith is dead.”

The authors

Lives shaped by public service, law and art.

Doreen DeSouza and Lillian Lim met by chance after both made their homes in the same South Kohala community on the Big Island of Hawaii. One built her career in the corridors of state government, the other in the courtrooms of the justice system.

After Doreen lost her husband of 47 years, Lillian suggested a collaborative writing project as a way through a difficult time. Their method was unconventional: one wrote a chapter, the other wrote the next. Across two voices and two different ways of seeing the world, the story became Different Kinds of Justice.

Portrait of Doreen A. DeSouza Riggin

D.A. DeSouza

Doreen A. DeSouza Riggin

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Doreen arrived in New York as a university student and later made Maryland her home for several decades. She served on the executive staff of five governors from both sides of the aisle, with responsibility for political appointments. Doreen and her late husband, George, retired to Hawaii in 2007. An abstract painter working in acrylics, she has pursued art throughout her life. Different Kinds of Justice is her first work of fiction.

Portrait of Lillian Y. Lim

L.Y. Lim

Lillian Y. Lim

A former state prosecutor and retired trial court judge, Lillian prosecuted political corruption, fraud, murder and death penalty cases before presiding over civil and criminal matters, including fraud and homicide. She is the author of several legal nonfiction works and was a longtime newspaper columnist. Lillian lives in Hawaii with her husband, plays several musical instruments and competes in outrigger canoe races.

Different Kinds of Justice

Some verdicts are reached outside the courtroom.

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