THE KILLING OF MINDI QUINTANA - A New Voice for Crime Writing Philadelphia

Freddy Builder is certain he is meant for more. More than his life in corporate America bondage. More than selling china to bluebloods in Philadelphia’s landmark department store, Chanet’s. Meant for more, meant for better, and lacking only, only an occasion to rise to.

And now that occasion is murder-of Mindi Quintana, an old college flame wanting simply to stay in his past.

Freddy’s crime is major news from the start. Mindi is the beautiful daughter of a renowned Philadelphia businessman whose dramatic fall a few years back captivated the city. A televised trial for Freddy is in the offing.

Meanwhile, he is writing the book about his relationship with Mindi everybody wants — a remorseless rewrite of her life, his own, and their miserably thin involvement. As excerpts of his book are published to acclaim, he gives articulate, sympathetic jailhouse interviews, publishes ghostwritten articles on prison issues, and coverage goes national. A new celebrity murderer is taking the stage — a killer with a book, a jailhouse literary sensation.

Freddy’s defense attorney, Philip, watches in disgust as his client builds his fame with the bones of his victim. As a career public defender, Philip thought he’d seen evil in all its incarnations. He’d lost his outrage, his passion for the law, and his marriage along the way. But Freddy’s case is a turning point for him — the public’s sympathy for the poet-murderer, the rebel, the killer as greater soul, stirs something dormant in Philip.

To stop Freddy, and to vindicate Mindi, Philip will have to violate his oath, even break the law. But with the help of Mindi’s best friend Lisa, he gives Mindi back the truth of her life and death. And he’ll deliver a comeuppance to a killer with a book.

Jeffrey A. Cohen is one of the freshest, brashest and voices to come out of the Philadelphia legal machine in a long time.  Disillusioned and disenchanted, he calls into question his chosen vocation and its teachings.


While every dime-a-dozen lawyer in Philly seems to be a  formulaic writer of some degree, Cohen has set a new bar for writing in the city of brotherly love!