Tom McInnes, a maverick young attorney, leaves his prestigious law firm to return to his small Alabama hometown to probe the murder of his younger brother and soon discovers that he has uncovered more than he ever wanted to know about dirty dealings in Cooper's Bend. A first novel. 15,000 first printing. Once he hears of his younger brother's murder, narrator Tom McInnes, a hard-nosed Mobile, AL, lawyer, vows to find the culprit. Back home with his wealthy, distant parents, he learns about his brother's gambling debts, cocaine habit, "trailer-park" girlfriend, run-ins with the law, and ultimate death on the river. Tom abruptly becomes a target, too, as thieves trash his computer and attempts are made on his life. Familial conflicts, rural Southern characters, big-city lawyer tactics, and a slightly convoluted but intriguing plot round out this debut mystery by a Birmingham attorney. For all collections. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Tom McInnes is the "smart son," the older brother who made a good life for himself as an attorney. Tom has opened a private practice in Mobile, Alabama, where he is joined by Joey, the not-so-gentle giant who acts as his investigator, and Kelly, his resourceful secretary. Tom's brother, Hall, is the black sheep of the family, a drug smuggler who ended up murdered. Their father, Sam, who owns a big chunk of their hometown of Cooper's Bend, Alabama, asks Tom to get to the bottom of Hall's death, but the path to discovery is strewn with corpses, racism, and ugly little secrets. First-novelist Stewart has developed solid senses of both place and character. Sam is cold and distant but a man of honor. Their adversary is mobster Mike Gerrard, as cold-blooded and well connected a sociopath as ever graced a country club. An impressive debut for a promising sleuth. George Needham Cutting loose from his white-shoe Mobile law firm hasn't sent Tom McInnes back to his family home in Coopers Bend, but hearing that his kid brother Hall has died does. His parents are as remote from each other, and mostly from Tom, as ever, but he does get to know his brother better than ever. Item: Hall didn't drown in the Alabama River: he was shot to death. Item: the good-time drug supplier was involved with some serious felonies and some serious bad guys. Item: Hall's girlfriend Christy Shores hardly waits till he's cold before coming on to Tom. When the case file the local sheriff has loaned him is stolen from his family's house during Hall's funeral, Tom decides to follow the trail that leads from Hall to the shadowy higher-ups behind his gambling and drug-dealing. It's a decision that'll send him first to seek the help of Mike Gerrard, the most dangerous man in Alabama, and then to battle Gerrard's endless supplies of curveballs and underlings. Before long, Tom's quest to find out the truth about Hall's death has turned into a life-or-death struggle to avoid the lassos Gerrard's tossing around his neck and Stewart, in a brilliantly plotted curve of rising suspense, is stripping away Tom's allies by implicating them one by one in the murder as Tom swims through murky layers of deception, laying down a few himself. An atmospheric setting, evocative family background, Chinese box of a plot, and a hero tough and clever enough to surprise you as much as the bad guys -- it all makes for the most accomplished debut of the season, an obvious Edgar contender, and a serious threat for the title of Compleat Suspense Novel. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Mike Stewart is an attorney who lives in Birmingham, Alabama. He is at work on a second Tom McInnes mystery. Most crime novelists trying to move in on John Grisham's territory do so by upping the ante... Mike Stewart, in an impressive debut, has carved his own niche by holding back. In Sins of the Brother, Stewart shows a gift for economy of language and plot that is rare these days, and a talent for evoking atmosphere that has all but vanished from thriller novels. Stewart finds heroism in ordinary men placed in extraordinary circumstances and evil in the seemingly banal, which makes Sins of the Brother chillingly believable. He seems like the kind of novelist whose career you'll want to follow, and this is a good place to start.