Robert Bailey Books in Order (Updated September 10, 2026)

Robert Bailey writes Southern legal thrillers centered on flawed attorneys, courtroom strategy, family loyalty, race, corruption, redemption, and the culture of Alabama and Tennessee. His connected series are McMurtrie and Drake, Bocephus Haynes, Jason Rich, and the newer Max Ringo books. He has also written the inspirational standalone The Golfer’s Carol and political thriller The Boomerang.

The best starting point is The Professor if you want Bailey’s larger connected legal world. Bocephus Haynes first appears there before eventually receiving his own series, and the four McMurtrie and Drake novels establish many of the relationships that define Bailey’s courtroom fiction. Readers wanting a newer entry point can begin independently with Rich Blood or The Mediator.

Bailey’s books fall into four courtroom eras

• McMurtrie and Drake: Four novels about retired law professor Tom McMurtrie, attorney Rick Drake, and their Alabama legal circle.
• Bocephus Haynes: Two novels that move Tom’s friend Bo from supporting character to lead attorney.
• Jason Rich: Three novels about a billboard lawyer returning to Guntersville while trying to rebuild his career and life.
• Max Ringo: A newer series beginning with The Mediator in 2026 and continuing with The Judge in 2027.

McMurtrie and Drake books in order

Thomas Jackson McMurtrie is a legendary University of Alabama law professor whose expertise in evidence has influenced generations of attorneys. Rick Drake is a talented former student whose difficult relationship with Tom becomes one of the most important partnerships in the series.

1. The Professor (2015): McMurtrie’s academic career is destroyed by a powerful colleague, but a trucking case involving widow Wilma Newton gives the aging professor a chance to return to the courtroom and prove that teaching trial law is not the same as being finished with it.
2. Between Black and White (2016): Bocephus Haynes is charged with murdering Andy Walton, the man believed to have led the Ku Klux Klan mob that murdered Bo’s father in 1966, leaving Tom and Rick to defend their friend against a case built around revenge.
3. The Last Trial (2018): When Tom’s old enemy Jack Willistone is murdered, evidence points toward the broken Wilma Newton, and Tom agrees to defend her while Rick suffers a family tragedy and Bo joins the investigation.
4. The Final Reckoning (2019): Death-row killer JimBone Wheeler escapes prison and begins murdering people connected with Tom, forcing the dying lawyer, Rick, and Bo into a final fight that moves beyond the courtroom.

Read all four consecutively. Tom’s health, friendship with Rick, relationship with Bo, earlier cases, and the return of characters such as Wilma Newton make publication order important.

The Professor asks whether a legendary teacher can still win an actual trial

Tom has spent decades teaching other lawyers how evidence works. He is respected throughout Alabama, but age, cancer, and professional betrayal leave him wondering whether his practical career is over.

The case brought by Wilma Newton forces him to test the principles he has spent his life teaching. That courtroom comeback establishes Bailey’s recurring interest in lawyers who appear damaged or finished but find one more reason to fight.

Bear Bryant’s influence runs through Tom McMurtrie

Tom’s history is closely associated with the University of Alabama and the culture surrounding legendary football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant.

Bailey uses that football tradition to reinforce Tom’s ideas about preparation, loyalty, resilience, and refusing to quit. It gives the legal series a specifically Alabama identity rather than using the South as interchangeable courtroom scenery.

Between Black and White makes Bocephus Haynes the defendant

Bo watched his father being murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1966.

Forty-five years later, Andy Walton is killed at the same place. Because Walton was believed to have led the men who killed Bo’s father, investigators have a powerful apparent motive when suspicion falls on Bo.

Tom and Rick therefore have to defend a friend whose entire life gives prosecutors an emotionally convincing reason to say he wanted Walton dead.

The Last Trial brings Wilma Newton back from Book 1

Wilma first appears in The Professor, where her trucking case helps bring Tom back into active legal work.

In The Last Trial, she is the person accused of murdering Jack Willistone. Tom agrees to represent her after her fourteen-year-old daughter asks him for help.

The return means Book 3 works much better after the original novel. Wilma’s importance is not simply that she is another criminal defendant, but that readers already know what Tom’s first courtroom comeback meant to both of them.

The Final Reckoning deliberately leaves the courthouse

JimBone Wheeler once promised Tom that he would punish everyone the lawyer loved. His prison escape gives him a chance to fulfill that threat.

Tom is also dying of cancer, so time matters in two ways. He has to stop Wheeler before more people die while knowing that his own life may already be nearing its end.

The result is a series conclusion driven more by pursuit and survival than by one final courtroom verdict.

Bocephus Haynes gets his own cases after Tom’s story closes

Bo has already been defendant, friend, and fellow attorney in the McMurtrie and Drake books before he becomes the lead of his own series.

1. Legacy of Lies (2020): District Attorney General Helen Lewis is about to be arrested for murdering her ex-husband and asks Bo to defend her, forcing him to confront corruption, prejudice, grief, and a secret the victim threatened to expose.
2. The Wrong Side (2021): Teen pop star Brittany Crutcher is murdered and high-school football star Odell Champagne becomes the prime suspect, but Bo knows the young man through his son and agrees to defend him despite intense local anger.

Readers can start with Legacy of Lies, but Bo has substantially more history if you have already read the four McMurtrie and Drake novels.

Legacy of Lies gives Bo a client who once held prosecutorial power

Helen Lewis normally stands on the prosecution side of criminal cases. When her ex-husband is killed, she becomes the person needing a defense attorney.

Her choice of Bo matters because he is already struggling after his wife’s death and has spent his own life fighting the consequences of racial violence in Pulaski. The case forces both lawyer and client into positions they never expected to occupy.

The Wrong Side makes community pressure part of the trial

Brittany Crutcher is famous and beloved. Odell Champagne is a local football hero and also one of Bo’s son’s best friends.

Once Odell is charged, Bo’s decision to represent him makes the attorney a public target. The courtroom battle therefore takes place inside a town that has already decided what justice should look like.

Jason Rich is a very different lawyer from Tom McMurtrie

Jason Rich built his reputation through aggressive personal-injury advertising, including the slogan “In an accident? Get Rich!” He enters the series after divorce and rehab, with money and professional success unable to disguise how badly his personal life has deteriorated.

1. Rich Blood (2022): Jason returns to Lake Guntersville after his sister Jana is accused of arranging her husband’s murder and takes a criminal case despite having little trial experience in that area.
2. Rich Waters (2023): Jason hopes to rebuild his life in Guntersville but is blackmailed by local meth king Tyson Cade into defending a former high-school football star accused of murdering a police officer.
3. Rich Justice (2024): Tyson Cade is murdered and Jason becomes the accused man, forcing him to seek help from disgraced former adversary Shay Lankford while trying to prove he did not commit the killing.

This trilogy should be read in order. Jason’s recovery, family relationships, connection with Tyson Cade, and accumulation of enemies carry directly from one book into the next.

Rich Blood begins with the lawyer defending his own sister

Jason made his money handling accidents rather than serious criminal trials. Jana nevertheless asks him to represent her when police accuse her of having her husband killed.

Returning home forces Jason to face family members, old relationships, addiction, and the reputation he built by turning his name into a billboard brand. The case is therefore both professional reinvention and personal reckoning.

Rich Waters puts Jason under Tyson Cade’s control

Jason does not voluntarily choose the central criminal defense. Tyson Cade uses threats against Jason’s family and friends to force him into representing the accused man.

Jason decides that merely surviving the case is not enough. He wants to dismantle Cade’s meth operation, turning the legal defense into part of a broader attempt to free Guntersville from the criminal network dominating it.

Rich Justice reverses the courtroom roles again

After two books defending other people, Jason becomes the murder defendant.

Tyson Cade’s death gives police an obvious suspect because Jason has spent so much time opposing him. Jason has to rely on Shay Lankford, an attorney with his own damaged reputation, while trying to identify who actually killed Cade.

The Golfer’s Carol stands entirely outside the legal thrillers

• The Golfer’s Carol (2020): Randy Clark reaches his fortieth birthday believing financial failure, a struggling marriage, and the collapse of his professional-golf dreams have left him without a future, until the ghost of his best friend offers him four rounds with four heroes who each teach him a different lesson about life.

The book is an inspirational fable rather than a courtroom thriller. It can be read independently and requires no knowledge of Tom McMurtrie, Bo Haynes, or Jason Rich.

The Boomerang leaves the courtroom for Washington and the desert

• The Boomerang (2025): White House Chief of Staff Eli James knows the president has terminal cancer, then watches his condition mysteriously improve just as Eli’s own daughter is diagnosed, sending him toward a pharmaceutical conspiracy and a government secret worth billions.

Eli’s investigation forces him to flee with his family and ally with powerful western landowner Nester “the Beast” Sanchez. The novel combines political conspiracy with Bailey’s recurring theme of a parent willing to challenge almost any institution to protect a child.

Max Ringo enters the bibliography through mediation, not a murder trial

Max Ringo was once a courtroom star at an elite firm. A car accident and addiction to painkillers destroyed that career and sent her to rehabilitation.

1. The Mediator (2026): Fresh out of rehab, Max receives a chance to rebuild her legal career by mediating a high-stakes divorce, but the husband kidnaps her teenage son Nathan and orders her to force a settlement on his terms within three days.
2. The Judge (expected March 16, 2027): The announced second Max Ringo novel continues the series after The Mediator and is scheduled for release in March 2027.

As of September 10, 2026, only The Mediator has been released. The Judge remains forthcoming.

The Mediator turns a divorce settlement into a hostage deadline

Max is supposed to remain neutral between two powerful people ending their marriage. Instead, one party kidnaps Nathan and orders her to manipulate the negotiation.

She has three days to produce the settlement he wants while secretly trying to find her son. That gives the story two simultaneous legal problems: Max has to perform her professional role convincingly while using the same negotiation skills against the man threatening her family.

Bailey’s lawyers keep returning to the same theme: redemption through one more case

• Tom McMurtrie: Age, illness, and betrayal appear to have ended his career until The Professor gives him another courtroom.
• Bocephus Haynes: Grief and the racial violence that shaped his childhood threaten to define him until new clients give him another reason to fight.
• Jason Rich: Addiction, divorce, flashy advertising, and professional shortcuts leave him trying to become a better lawyer and person.
• Max Ringo: Rehab gives her one opportunity to rebuild the career destroyed after her accident and opioid addiction.

Robert Bailey books in publication order

1. The Professor (2015): Tom McMurtrie returns to active litigation after professional betrayal and cancer threaten to end his career.
2. Between Black and White (2016): Tom and Rick defend Bo Haynes against a murder charge rooted in the lynching of Bo’s father.
3. The Last Trial (2018): Tom defends Wilma Newton when an old enemy is murdered.
4. The Final Reckoning (2019): Escaped killer JimBone Wheeler targets everyone Tom loves.
5. Legacy of Lies (2020): Bo Haynes defends prosecutor Helen Lewis after she is accused of murdering her former husband.
6. The Golfer’s Carol (2020): Randy Clark receives four extraordinary rounds of golf when he has lost hope in his future.
7. The Wrong Side (2021): Bo defends a high-school football player accused of murdering a famous singer.
8. Rich Blood (2022): Jason Rich returns home to defend his sister against a murder accusation.
9. Rich Waters (2023): A meth king blackmails Jason into defending a man accused of killing a police officer.
10. Rich Justice (2024): Jason is charged with Tyson Cade’s murder and needs another disgraced lawyer to defend him.
11. The Boomerang (2025): Eli James discovers a pharmaceutical and government conspiracy while trying to save his daughter from cancer.
12. The Mediator (2026): Max Ringo must negotiate a divorce while secretly trying to rescue her kidnapped son.

The connected Alabama and Tennessee route

Readers who want Bailey’s most interconnected legal world should begin with the four McMurtrie and Drake novels before moving to Bocephus Haynes.

1. The Professor: Meet Tom, Rick, and the Alabama legal setting.
2. Between Black and White: Learn Bo’s family history when he becomes Tom and Rick’s client.
3. The Last Trial: Watch Tom, Rick, and Bo work together on Wilma Newton’s defense.
4. The Final Reckoning: Complete Tom’s principal four-book arc.
5. Legacy of Lies: Let Bo become the lead attorney in his own right.
6. The Wrong Side: Continue Bo through another Pulaski murder trial.

Jason Rich can be started without the McMurtrie books

Jason belongs to Bailey’s broader Southern legal fiction, but Rich Blood is designed as a fresh entry point.

Readers who have never met Tom McMurtrie or Bo Haynes can still understand Jason’s divorce, addiction recovery, family conflict, advertising career, and return to Guntersville without difficulty.

Max Ringo is another clean starting point in 2026

The Mediator similarly launches a new lead character with her own professional history and family stakes.

It is currently Max Ringo Book 1 rather than a continuation of Jason Rich. Readers can therefore enter Bailey’s work through the newest series and return to his earlier Alabama novels later.

Bailey’s real legal career shapes the courtroom details

Robert Bailey practiced civil defense law in Huntsville, Alabama for decades before becoming a full-time bestselling novelist.

His books repeatedly emphasize evidence, trial preparation, negotiation, professional reputation, local judges, prosecutors, juries, and the emotional strain of representing clients when the consequences extend far beyond winning or losing a verdict.

Current Robert Bailey release picture

As of September 10, 2026, The Mediator is Bailey’s latest released novel and the first Max Ringo thriller.

The Judge has been announced as the sequel and is scheduled for March 16, 2027. Bailey’s published bibliography currently contains twelve principal books through The Mediator.

Questions about which Robert Bailey lawyer comes first

What Robert Bailey book should I read first?

Start with The Professor if you want Bailey’s original legal universe. Start with Rich Blood or The Mediator if you prefer a newer independent series.

How many McMurtrie and Drake books are there?

There are four: The Professor, Between Black and White, The Last Trial, and The Final Reckoning.

Does Bocephus Haynes appear before his own series?

Yes. Bo is an important character in the McMurtrie and Drake books before becoming the lead of Legacy of Lies and The Wrong Side.

How many Jason Rich books are there?

There are three published novels: Rich Blood, Rich Waters, and Rich Justice.

Should the Jason Rich books be read in order?

Yes. Tyson Cade, Jason’s addiction recovery, his family, and the consequences of earlier cases continue across all three books.

Is The Golfer’s Carol a legal thriller?

No. It is an inspirational golf fable about Randy Clark, adversity, family, and second chances.

Is The Boomerang part of a series?

It is currently a standalone political thriller centered on White House Chief of Staff Eli James.

How many Max Ringo books are released?

One, The Mediator, is published as of this update. The Judge is announced as Book 2 for March 2027.

What is Robert Bailey’s latest published book?

The Mediator, published in 2026, is his latest released novel as of September 10, 2026.

The Robert Bailey order that preserves every handoff

Read Tom McMurtrie and Rick Drake first if you want the fullest connected experience. Their four books introduce Bo Haynes and establish the Alabama legal world from which his own series grows.

Then read Legacy of Lies and The Wrong Side for Bo. Begin again with Rich Blood for Jason Rich, whose three-book arc stands comfortably on its own.

Keep The Golfer’s Carol and The Boomerang separate, then start the newest sequence with The Mediator. Add The Judge after its March 2027 release. This keeps Bailey’s recurring lawyers in their proper order without making every Southern courtroom story part of one artificial series.