Susan Wolfe Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Susan Wolfe
Susan Wolfe is an attorney with a law degree from Stanford University and a B. A. from the University of Chicago. After four years of practicing law on a full time basis, she bailed out and wrote “The Last Billable Hour”, a bestseller that won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

She would return to law for another sixteen years, first as a criminal defense attorney and then as an in house lawyer for various Silicon Valley high-tech companies.

Having been born and raised in San Bernadino, she resides in Palo Alto, California, with Ralph DeVoe, her husband.

The first real book that Susan ever read was “The Black Stallion” by Walter Farley. She was in Mr. Adams’ second grad class in San Bernadino, and he gave her permission to read on her own as the rest of the class was finishing up something else. So she found a copy of “The Black Stallion”, settled into her own chair, and the next thing she knew the entire class was laughing. Apparently, she had whinnied. Susan was so shocked to look up and see that she was back in that classroom that she can still remember the way that the light was filtering in through the windows.

Susan had just learned that reading created this little room out behind her head where she could go to have these adventures and be different people. That small room has been her solace and a major source of pleasure and learning ever since.

Susan also loved “The Wind in the Willows”, even wanted a yellow motor car, and “Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet” by Eleanor Cameron. Her sister, Linda, who was three years older, read her whole Zane Grey westerns before Susan could read them herself.

Susan has loved fiction ever since “Black Stallion”, and has believed since childhood that writing stories that other people want to read is the best activity there is. However she got to be in her twenties and still could not seem to write anything worth reading. One day she looked around and thought that she was a serious person and needed a career, and since she was good with words, she’d go with law.

A decade later, a friend that was trying to get her first job right out of college decided she’d write a mystery to keep her spirits up. She asked Susan to write one too, so that they could meet up and read their stories to one another. Susan agreed. The friend got a job within just a few months and forgot all about her mystery, however by then Susan became committed to hers. So she took off time from law in order to finish it, and that became “The Last Billable Hour”. And Susan’s wanted to write novels ever since then.

Her inspiration for “Escape Velocity” comes from her work as a lawyer. She has enjoyed working in-house as a lawyer in Silicon Valley tech companies, however she sometimes got frustrated that some people that worked for the company—from accounts payable clerks to highly paid executives—seemed uninterested or unable to actually do their jobs. Some people just seem to burrow into a company, and no amount of damage they cause ever really dislodges them.

So she thought others might like to know about this chaos, or, if they’d experienced it themselves, might like to know that someone else experienced it too.

“The Last Billable Hour” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 1989. Welcome to Tweedmore & Slyde, the Silicon Valley law firm, where ambition runs high, multi-million dollar deals are the order of the day, and stabbing a colleague in the back could possibly get taken all too literally.

Tweedmore & Slyde is the hot firm making a bid to be a major player when the company’s chief rainmaker, Leo Slyde, the firm’s king of the billable hour, is discovered stabbed to death in his corner office. It falls on T&S’s brightest, most unjustifiably insecure young associate Howard Rickover to conduct a most risky inside job for Sarah Nelson, a homicide detective. Can Howard possibly flush this wily murderer out among lawyers that do not make it a practice to get caught unprepared and still keep up with an associate’s impossible workload?

Susan Wolfe is at her best here depicting (and spoofing) the glitzy law firm scene. As a lawyer herself, she serves her damages with obvious glee and skill. This is a world of captivating corruption, with a delicate blend of suspense, malice, and sharp psychology. Wolfe winds up this story with a scene which explodes numerous myths.

“Escape Velocity” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2016. When does the Con become the Artist?

Georgia Griffin has just set foot in Silicon Valley, having left Piney Arkansas, on some very bald tires; after having firmly rejecting her beloved dad’s life as a con artist. Her dad is sitting in jail and there is a certain minister that hugs her mom for Jesus as he eyes Katie-Ann, Georgia’s younger sister. Georgia desperately needs to keep her job for Lumina Software as a paralegal so she can provide her sister with a California haven before it’s too late.

Georgia, as she is still living in her car, realizes that self-dealing and incompetence have got a death grip on this new company. She decides she will adapt her extensive con artist training, just this once, to clean the company up. However success is seductive.

Before long, Georgia is an avid paralegal during the day and a masterful con artist at night, using these increasingly bold gambits designed to salvage Lumina Software. And then she steps into the shadow of one real crime and has to decide: is she going to risk the roof over her sister’s head, her job, and possibly even her very soul?

Susan delivers an instantly addictive and disconcertingly credible novel and will send the unwary reader pell-mell through these mazy proceedings and gamesmanship of corporate Silicon Valley. This is a legal and financial legal thriller with rich character development that creates an absolutely compelling up-all-night read.