Chasing the Chameleon is the third book in the Cash McCahill series. His prior Cash novels were Sting Like a Butterfly and The Eye of the Tigress. He is working on the fourth installment in the series: Canary in the Courthouse.
In Chameleon, a drug cartel gives Dallas defense lawyer Cash McCahill an ultimatum: betray his client or face death. He refuses to turn on his client, prompting the cartel to put out a hit on him. Instead of going on the run, Cash hides in plain sight by surgically altering his face and stealing the identity of a dead cop twenty years his senior. Only two people know Cash’s secret: the surgeon who gave him a new face and Tina Campos, a trans woman who introduced Cash to the surgeon and who works as a paralegal in Cash’s law firm.
Burrowed deep underground, Cash remains safe and secluded until a killer stalks and kills several trans women. The victims all have links to Tina, and the killer closes in on her. Protecting Tina forces Cash out of hiding and into the open, where he faces not one but two deadly threats.
Coggins stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R
about writing and researching this book:
On why writing legal fiction makes me a better lawyer and vice versa:
Whenever appearing on a panel at a writers’ conference or book festival, I am often asked whether I’m a writer who practices law or a lawyer who writes on the side. The question stops me every time, because I cannot conceive of being one but not the other.
I have known since junior high school that I would pursue dual careers as a lawyer and writer. Or author and attorney. Which course receives top billing depends on my mood that day and hour.
My parents, both of whom were teachers, blamed my choice of careers on too many hours in my youth spent watching black-and-white reruns of Perry Mason and reading scores of Erle Stanley Gardner’s eighty-two Perry Mason mysteries.
Indeed, Cash McCahill, the lawyer protagonist of my Cash series, could be the offspring of Mason. He shares Mason’s trial skills and flair for drama, but Cash has hit a few more bumps in the road, including doing a stint in federal prison for jury tampering.
To me, writing legal novels and trying criminal cases are two sides of the same coin. At Harvard Law School, my constitutional law professor said that 99% of being a good lawyer is picking the right word at the right time. Well, that is 100% of being a good writer. Thus, the overlap between my two cherished occupations is almost complete.
The thirst to pursue both careers has led me down many interesting paths. I made it an early goal to learn as much as possible about all facets of criminal justice, including the workings of courts, cops, and corrections.
My desire to explore every bright light and dark corner of criminal justice led me from the lecture halls and libraries of Oxford University to the meanest cellblocks in the toughest prisons in the country. I have also clerked for an appellate judge and anchored a legal call-in radio show.
The mother lode of all experiences has been my twelve years in the Department of Justice: four as a front-line federal prosecutor and eight as the U.S. Attorney in North Texas, overseeing scores of prosecutors in a vast district that spanned one hundred counties and stretched from Dallas-Fort Worth to Lubbock and Amarillo.
At the Justice Department, I had the privilege of working with hundreds of local, state, and federal prosecutors and thousands of cops and agents. I could mine their stories for a century and never do more than scratch the surface.
Chasing the Chameleon is my third book in the Cash McCahill series. Only seventy-nine more Cash novels to reach Erle Stanley Gardner’s Herculean output of eighty-two Perry Mason mysteries.
Whenever appearing on a panel at a writers’ conference or book festival, I am often asked whether I’m a writer who practices law or a lawyer who writes on the side. The question stops me every time, because I cannot conceive of being one but not the other.
I have known since junior high school that I would pursue dual careers as a lawyer and writer. Or author and attorney. Which course receives top billing depends on my mood that day and hour.
My parents, both of whom were teachers, blamed my choice of careers on too many hours in my youth spent watching black-and-white reruns of Perry Mason and reading scores of Erle Stanley Gardner’s eighty-two Perry Mason mysteries.
Indeed, Cash McCahill, the lawyer protagonist of my Cash series, could be the offspring of Mason. He shares Mason’s trial skills and flair for drama, but Cash has hit a few more bumps in the road, including doing a stint in federal prison for jury tampering.
To me, writing legal novels and trying criminal cases are two sides of the same coin. At Harvard Law School, my constitutional law professor said that 99% of being a good lawyer is picking the right word at the right time. Well, that is 100% of being a good writer. Thus, the overlap between my two cherished occupations is almost complete.
The thirst to pursue both careers has led me down many interesting paths. I made it an early goal to learn as much as possible about all facets of criminal justice, including the workings of courts, cops, and corrections.
My desire to explore every bright light and dark corner of criminal justice led me from the lecture halls and libraries of Oxford University to the meanest cellblocks in the toughest prisons in the country. I have also clerked for an appellate judge and anchored a legal call-in radio show.
The mother lode of all experiences has been my twelve years in the Department of Justice: four as a front-line federal prosecutor and eight as the U.S. Attorney in North Texas, overseeing scores of prosecutors in a vast district that spanned one hundred counties and stretched from Dallas-Fort Worth to Lubbock and Amarillo.
At the Justice Department, I had the privilege of working with hundreds of local, state, and federal prosecutors and thousands of cops and agents. I could mine their stories for a century and never do more than scratch the surface.
Chasing the Chameleon is my third book in the Cash McCahill series. Only seventy-nine more Cash novels to reach Erle Stanley Gardner’s Herculean output of eighty-two Perry Mason mysteries.
You can learn more about Paul Coggins on his
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LinkedIn. Chasing the Chameleon is now available via all major booksellers.
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