Rule of Lies: My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption, and Murder in Putin's Russia

“There are many books that explain the transformation of Russia by focusing on the politicians, oligarchs, and KGB/FSB spies who run Russia. This isn’t one of them. Let me explain how a kid from New York founded a law firm in Moscow, had to flee for his life and ended up in a pissing contest with the Putin regime.”

An American lawyer’s brilliant, propulsive story of witnessing and playing a part in the transformation of Russia under Yeltsin and Putin, a true tale of fascinating personalities, criminal intrigue, harrowing situations, audacious actions and international politics that combines Bill Browder’s Red Notice with Michael Lewis’s Liar's Poker.

Raised by his father, a multimillionaire conman and crack addict who owned Manhattan’s most expensive brothel, twenty-four- year-old Jamison Firestone decided to change the channel. He graduated from law school in 1991 and sought his fortune in Gorbachev’s USSR establishing Russia’s first independent foreign law firm.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Jamison lived in the maelstrom that was Russia, defending himself and his clients from mafia attacks, dealing with corrupt police officers, having his law office raided by armed commandos, and once having to bug the offices of the Russian police.

Jamison was at the center of some of Russia’s most important events. He employed Sergei Magnitsky who was murdered for uncovering the largest tax theft in Russian history and teamed up with Bill Browder and Alexei Navalny to expose his killers. Along the way he inadvertently taught Navalny to make videos exposing corruption and started a war with the Russian government over passage of the Magnitsky Acts which threatened to sanction Russia’s most powerful people.

A real life story that reads like a spy novel, Rule of Lies goes deep inside contemporary Russia and events that have reshaped the globe. Darkly comic, sometimes horrifying and deeply moving, it is a chilling warning of what can happen when a nascent democracy succumbs to one man’s corrupt iron rule, becoming not only an authoritarian nation but a profoundly criminal one—a true mafia state.

"Written with all the pace and energy of a John Grisham novel, Rule of Lies takes the reader from a wild childhood as the son of a New York conman to becoming a daredevil lawyer in Moscow dealing with mobsters, crooked police and SWAT teams, and on to becoming an internationally known activist fighting against Putin. An incredible true story and a great read!” ⎯ Bill Browder, author of Red Notice and Freezing Order

“Jamison Firestone is a legend in his own lifetime. For anyone following Russia’s febrile efforts to transform into a market economy and pluralistic polity in the 1990s and 2000s, he was a frontline figure. Firestone was close to all the right (as well as the wrong) people in one of the most difficult and dangerous places to practice law. His book is a remarkable firsthand account of some of the most tragic events and developments in Putin’s Russia.” ⎯ Fiona Hill, former Senior Director for Europe and Russia, US National Security Council and author of There is Nothing For You Here

"Jamison Firestone has written a tremendous book about a terrible tragedy. If you want to know how Putin ruined Russia and to understand why it matters, you should read Rule of Lies." ⎯ Oliver Bullough

"As vivid and compelling as a John Le Carre thriller. Jamison Firestone tells the true story of his David vs Goliath struggle against the Russian state. It is a portrait of Russia's descent into criminality under Vladimir Putin, written from the perspective of a US lawyer who spent nearly two decades in Moscow. There are first-hand accounts of brave Russian dissidents who resisted the Kremlin including Alexey Navalny and Sergei Magnitsky and of the corrupt officials who persecuted them. An essential guide to what post-communist Russia has become, at a time when Moscow is pursuing a murderous war in Ukraine." ⎯ Luke Harding, author of Shadow State