Waiting on Wednesday – Grave Danger by James Grippando

Welcome to my weekly segment, Waiting on Wednesday, where I look at upcoming books that I am planning to order and review in the next few months and which I think I will really enjoy. I run this segment in conjunction with the Can’t-Wait Wednesday meme that is currently running at Wishful Endings. Stay tuned to see reviews of these books when I get a copy of them. For this week’s Waiting on Wednesday, I look at an awesome legal thriller set for release at the start of 2025, with Grave Danger by James Grippando.

Amazon

Earlier this year I had the very great pleasure of diving into the latest book from a long-running series when I read the amazing novel, Goodbye Girl by James Grippando. The latest entry in Grippando’s Jack Swyteck series, Goodbye Girl was a highly clever legal thriller, loaded with twists, exciting legal manoeuvres and a sinister killer. Thanks to its great plot and fantastic characters, I ended up having an amazing time with Goodbye Girl, and it was one of the better audiobooks I listened to in the first half of 2024. As such, I am now keen to check out every new Jack Swyteck novel that comes out, as I know I’m going to have a ton of fun with them.

To that end, I have been keeping an eye on Grippando’s upcoming releases, and I was very excited to see that a new Jack Swyteck book is coming out in January 2025. This book, Grave Danger, will see Swyteck caught up in another elaborate legal case with deadly implications for himself, his client, and those that he loves.

Plot Synopsis:

Bestselling author James Grippando’s legendary criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck is back to defend a single mother accused of kidnapping her own child in a perilous case involving politics and international diplomacy that will test his legal expertise and his marriage.

Jack Swyteck’s new client fled Iran to Miami with her daughter, and has been accused of kidnapping by her husband. The seasoned attorney must not only plan a winning defense. To stop the father from taking the girl back to Tehran, Jack must build a case under international law and prove that returning the child would put her at risk.

But everything in this case isn’t what it seems, and Jack quickly learns that his client is really the child’s aunt and that the biological mother may have been killed by Iran’s morality police. But what role did the father play in his wife’s death, and why is Jack’s wife, FBI Agent Andie Henning, being pressured by her bosses to persuade Jack to drop the case?

Plunging into an investigation unlike any other, Jack must discover who is behind the legal maneuvering and what their interest is. As politics threatens to derail the case and compromise the best interests of the child, Jack and Andie find themselves on opposite sides—with their marriage hanging in the balance. For their relationship to survive, the couple must navigate a treacherous web of deceit that extends from a Miami courthouse to the highest echelons of Washington DC, and spells grave danger at every turn.

I have to say that I am very intrigued by this upcoming book, especially as Grippando appears to have pulled together a particularly compelling narrative. The case at the heart of Grave Danger has some awesome international and political implications behind it, which look set to tie into some contemporary world-events. I have no doubt that Grippando is going to wrangle together some excellent court sequences, and this sounds like a particularly strong central storyline for a great legal thriller. It also sounds like Grippando is going to continue diving into the marital issues between the protagonist and his wife, as the strain of a high-profiled defence attorney being married to an FBI agent continues to emerge. This should result in a particularly intense read, and I am very much looking forward to it.

Honestly, after how much Goodbye Girl impressed me earlier this year, James Grippando and the Jack Swyteck series is now firmly on my annual to-read list, so there was no way that I am going to miss Grave Danger when it comes out. However, I also really love the sound of the cool story that Grave Danger has, and I am already very intrigued to see how the entire narrative comes together. This will probably end up being one of the stronger thrillers I read in 2025, and I cannot wait to get my hands on Grave Danger to continue my new adventures with James Grippando and the Jack Swyteck series.