Paul Levine Books in Order (Updated September 10, 2026)

Paul Levine writes legal thrillers, crime fiction, historical suspense, and comic courtroom mysteries. His longest-running protagonist is Jake Lassiter, a former Miami Dolphins linebacker who becomes a Florida trial lawyer and repeatedly handles cases that place him on the wrong side of clients, judges, prosecutors, and sometimes the law itself.

Levine also created the sparring legal duo Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord, later merged their world with Jake Lassiter, and in 2025 began the historical Einstein and Chaplin series. His standalone thrillers range from immigration and human trafficking to nuclear terrorism, sports fixing, and judicial conspiracy.

The simplest starting point is To Speak for the Dead for Jake Lassiter, Solomon vs. Lord for the comic legal series, or Midnight Burning for the Einstein and Chaplin historical adventures. Jake’s final full-length case is Early Grave, while Levine’s newest published novel is Midnight Patriots, released in June 2026.

Where Each Paul Levine Series Begins

1. Jake Lassiter: begin with To Speak for the Dead for Miami legal thrillers built around an unconventional former football player turned lawyer.
2. Solomon vs. Lord: start with Solomon vs. Lord for Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord, two attorneys with opposite personalities and incompatible ideas about how the law should work.
3. Lassiter, Solomon and Lord: begin with Bum Rap only after meeting the principal characters in their earlier books if you want the most context.
4. Einstein and Chaplin: begin with Midnight Burning for historical thrillers using the real friendship of Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin as the basis for fictional anti-Nazi conspiracies.
5. Standalones: Illegal, Ballistic, Paydirt, Impact, and 9 Scorpions can be read independently.

Jake Lassiter Books in Publication Order

Jake Lassiter is a former professional linebacker who attended law school at night and built a career as a Miami trial lawyer. He is physically imposing, skeptical of polished legal culture, loyal to people he believes have been mistreated, and frequently willing to bend courtroom conventions in pursuit of what he considers justice.

1. To Speak for the Dead (1990): Jake defends orthopedic surgeon Roger Salisbury in a medical-malpractice case that initially looks routine before a suspicious death turns the civil dispute into a much darker investigation.
2. Night Vision (1991): Serving as a special prosecutor, Jake investigates the murder of a woman whose killer left a lipsticked message on a mirror, drawing him through corruption, sexuality, psychiatry, and eventually London.
3. False Dawn (1993): Jake refuses to accept a warehouse worker’s guilty plea in a forklift death and uncovers a trail involving stolen Fabergé eggs, Havana, intelligence agencies, and international theft.
4. Mortal Sin (1994): Jake is romantically involved with Gina Florio while representing her mob-connected husband in a wrongful-death case, placing desire, professional duty, and organized crime on a collision course.
5. Riptide / Slashback (1995): Jake pursues $1.6 million in negotiable bonds stolen from elderly client Sam Kazdoy, following the money from Miami to Maui and into the world of professional windsurfing.
6. Fool Me Twice (1996): A murder case sends Jake from Miami to Aspen, where he becomes a suspect himself and must find the real killer while dealing with an old girlfriend and dangerous people in Colorado.
7. Flesh & Bones (1997): Jake represents model Chrissy Bernhardt after she shoots her wealthy father in a bar, forcing him to decide how far he is willing to go when his emotional attachment to a client threatens his professional judgment.
8. Lassiter (2011): A woman from Jake’s past asks him to investigate the disappearance of her sister, a runaway who entered the pornography industry eighteen years earlier, reopening one of the darkest failures of his younger life.
9. Last Chance Lassiter (2012, prequel novella): Jake represents aging rhythm and blues musician Cadillac Johnson, who claims a modern recording star stole the song that should have made him famous.
10. State vs. Lassiter (2013): Jake becomes the defendant when his banker and lover Pamela is found strangled with his belt after money disappears from his client trust accounts.
11. Bum Rap (2015): Jake defends Steve Solomon after the younger lawyer is accused of murdering a South Beach nightclub owner and finds himself increasingly drawn to Steve’s partner Victoria Lord.
12. Bum Luck (2017): After winning an acquittal for a client, Jake becomes convinced the man is guilty and dangerous, while Steve and Victoria begin to fear that Jake’s history of football concussions is affecting his judgment.
13. Bum Deal (2018): Jake changes sides and acts as a special prosecutor in a murder case with no body, no reliable eyewitness, and little conventional physical evidence.
14. Cheater’s Game (2020): Jake enters a federal case inspired by the college-admissions scandal and confronts wealthy parents, corrupt admissions practices, and a system where privilege can influence access to elite universities.
15. Early Grave (2023): After his godson suffers a catastrophic high-school football injury, Jake sues to abolish the sport while confronting his own chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the possibility that his legal career is nearing its end.

Series status: Levine has described Early Grave as Jake Lassiter’s final case.

One Important Prequel: Last Chance Lassiter

Last Chance Lassiter takes place before To Speak for the Dead even though it was published more than twenty years later.

The story shows Jake earlier in his career representing Cadillac Johnson, an older musician who believes a younger star stole his greatest song.

Chronological readers can place it first. Publication order is better for a first read because the novella was written for readers who already understand Jake’s personality and later career.

Riptide and Slashback Are One Book

• Riptide: the title used on many current editions.
• Slashback: the hardcover title used for the same Jake Lassiter novel.

Readers should count this story once, in fifth position in the original Lassiter sequence.

The Original Lassiter Era

The first seven books were published between 1990 and 1997.

1. To Speak for the Dead: establishes Jake as a lawyer willing to investigate beyond what a courtroom technically requires.
2. Night Vision: lets him work as a prosecutor rather than a defense attorney.
3. False Dawn: expands from Miami into international art theft and Cuba.
4. Mortal Sin: makes Jake’s personal relationships part of the danger.
5. Riptide: turns a stolen-bonds case into a chase from Florida to Hawaii.
6. Fool Me Twice: makes Jake himself vulnerable to a murder prosecution.
7. Flesh & Bones: closes the first phase with one of his most ethically difficult clients.

Jake Returns After a Fourteen-Year Gap

Lassiter appeared in 2011 after the long break following Flesh & Bones.

The returning Jake is older and carries more regret. A missing-person case forces him to revisit a young woman whose disappearance he failed to prevent eighteen years earlier.

The later books increasingly acknowledge the physical damage caused by Jake’s football career. What begins as background eventually becomes central to Bum Luck, Cheater’s Game, and especially Early Grave.

Solomon vs. Lord Books in Order

Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord are both Florida lawyers, but nearly everything else about their approach is different. Victoria is disciplined, polished, and respectful of rules. Steve improvises, manipulates procedure, and believes justice sometimes requires creative interpretation of those same rules.

1. Solomon vs. Lord (2005): Steve and Victoria begin as professional adversaries but are forced together in a murder case where their conflicting legal styles create as much tension as the evidence.
2. The Deep Blue Alibi (2006): The pair head to the Florida Keys for a case involving murder, wealth, family connections, and a death surrounded by conflicting stories.
3. Kill All the Lawyers (2006): One of Steve’s former clients reappears after leaving prison and begins making threats, while Steve and Victoria try to determine whether legal work from the past has created a present-day killer.
4. Trial & Error / Habeas Porpoise (2007): Steve and Victoria become involved in a Florida case where marine mammals, environmental conflict, legal maneuvering, and murder collide.
5. Solomon & Lord Sink or Swim / Drop Anchor (2012): A shorter Solomon and Lord adventure takes the bickering legal partners into another Florida case involving boats, danger, and the consequences of Steve’s unconventional methods.

Trial and Error Has an Alternate Title

Trial & Error was later retitled Habeas Porpoise.

They are the same Solomon and Lord story and should only be counted once.

The shorter Solomon & Lord Sink or Swim has similarly appeared under the title Drop Anchor.

When the Two Legal Series Collide

Levine eventually brought Jake Lassiter, Steve Solomon, and Victoria Lord into the same books.

1. Bum Rap (2015): Steve is accused of murdering a nightclub owner, and Jake becomes his defense lawyer while developing feelings for Victoria.
2. Bum Luck (2017): Jake’s behavior after winning a murder trial makes Steve and Victoria question whether his health is affecting his judgment.
3. Bum Deal (2018): Jake becomes a prosecutor, while Solomon and Lord appear on the opposing side of a difficult homicide case.

These three books belong in the later Jake Lassiter order and also work as a crossover trilogy for readers who know Solomon and Lord.

Standalone Paul Levine Thrillers

1. 9 Scorpions (1998): A Supreme Court law clerk becomes involved in a dangerous legal and political conspiracy where judicial decisions, ambition, sexuality, and murder intersect at the highest level of American law.
2. Illegal (2009): Down-on-his-luck lawyer Jimmy Payne searches for a missing Mexican woman and enters a violent world of border crossings, human trafficking, corrupt law enforcement, and a powerful rancher.
3. Ballistic (2011): A doomsday cult seizes a U.S. Air Force missile base, leaving a sergeant and a psychiatrist to stop a nuclear launch before the facility becomes the starting point for mass destruction.
4. Paydirt (2011): A disgraced former sports figure and his twelve-year-old son become involved in an apparently impossible plan to manipulate the outcome of the Super Bowl and profit from the bet.
5. Impact / Reversal (2014 editions): A catastrophic Everglades air crash produces a billion-dollar lawsuit and places Supreme Court Justice Sam Truitt and law clerk Lisa Fremont inside a case where negligence, terrorism, judicial influence, and personal betrayal intersect.

Standalone rule: None of these books requires Jake Lassiter, Steve Solomon, or Victoria Lord.

The Einstein and Chaplin Thrillers

Levine changed direction late in his career by using real historical figures Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin as fictional thriller protagonists.

1. Midnight Burning (2025): In 1937 Hollywood, Einstein and Chaplin uncover a Nazi-backed conspiracy involving fascist groups, assassination plots, and attempts to push the United States toward authoritarian politics before war officially begins in Europe.
2. Midnight Patriots (2026): In 1940, German spy Fritz Duquesne plans to kidnap Einstein and deliver him to Berlin for the Reich’s atomic program while an SS assassin is sent to kill Chaplin for mocking Hitler in The Great Dictator.

Read these in order. The books use the real friendship between Einstein and Chaplin but build fictional conspiracies around actual historical tensions in prewar and wartime America.

Midnight Patriots Is the Current Paul Levine Release

Midnight Patriots was published in June 2026.

Europe is already at war. Germany occupies much of the continent, London is under attack, and the United States has not yet entered the conflict.

Fritz Duquesne wants Einstein alive because of his scientific knowledge. Hitler’s government wants Chaplin dead because The Great Dictator has turned the Nazi leader into an object of ridicule.

The conspiracy converges aboard the Santa Fe Super Chief, turning one of America’s famous passenger trains into the setting for the final confrontation.

Latest book: Midnight Patriots is Levine’s newest published novel as of September 10, 2026.

Why Early Grave Matters as a Series Ending

Jake Lassiter’s football background was present from his first novel, but Early Grave turns that history into the central problem.

Jake suffers from chronic traumatic encephalopathy after years of football collisions.

Then his godson Rodrigo is catastrophically injured playing high-school football.

Jake responds by suing to stop the sport, making himself extremely unpopular in a community where football carries enormous cultural and financial power.

The case also forces him to examine his own declining health and whether he has enough time left to repair his personal relationships.

Paul Levine Reading Questions

What was Paul Levine’s first novel?

To Speak for the Dead, published in 1990, was his first novel and introduced Jake Lassiter.

How many Jake Lassiter books are there?

There are fifteen principal Jake Lassiter books in the standard publication sequence through Early Grave, including the crossover novels and the prequel novella Last Chance Lassiter.

Is Early Grave the last Jake Lassiter book?

Yes. Levine has described Early Grave as Lassiter’s final case.

Are Riptide and Slashback different books?

No. They are alternate titles for the same Jake Lassiter novel.

Are Trial and Error and Habeas Porpoise the same book?

Yes. Habeas Porpoise is the later title for the Solomon and Lord novel originally published as Trial & Error.

Which books feature Lassiter, Solomon, and Lord together?

Bum Rap, Bum Luck, and Bum Deal form the crossover run.

What is Paul Levine’s newest series?

The Einstein and Chaplin historical thrillers began with Midnight Burning in 2025 and continued with Midnight Patriots in 2026.

What is Paul Levine’s latest book?

Midnight Patriots, published in June 2026, is his latest novel as of September 10, 2026.

A Practical Paul Levine Reading Plan

Start with Jake Lassiter if you want Levine’s defining work. Publication order preserves Jake’s movement from younger Miami lawyer to older attorney confronting both legal enemies and the physical consequences of professional football.

Read Solomon and Lord separately from their first novel, then use Bum Rap, Bum Luck, and Bum Deal as the point where Levine’s two legal worlds merge.

The standalones can be chosen freely. Finish with Midnight Burning and Midnight Patriots if you want Levine’s newest direction, where real historical figures replace fictional lawyers at the center of the action.