Author Description

In this exciting debut novel, Mark Stern has written a spellbinding legal thriller which joins an ingenious plot with original characters to produce a taut, fast-paced read. Tensions are running high at the premier Washington law firm of Arant & Devries. In one week their prize client, the handsome and influential Senator Cicero Deauville, will go on trial for the rape of a young woman on his staff. All of Washington is watching with grim interest. The Senator's lawyers have only one problem: the evidence is stacked against them. Peter Fallon, a feisty former prosecutor, has been tapped to spearhead the Senator's defense. Fallon brings to his assignment the street smarts of his Boston-Irish boyhood and the intellectual rigor that won him a classics scholarship at Harvard. He is supported by a talented but discordant team that ranges from Felix Wolfson, the famous but tyrannical trial wizard, to Sarah Strasser, a promising - and extremely attractive - first year associate. In the aura of the Senator's powerful charm, Sarah grows increasingly certain of her client's innocence. At the same time, she is convinced that even Fallon's brilliance and Wolfson's ruthlessness cannot save him from prison and disgrace. But Fallon's courtroom skill and his shrewd manipulation of the rules of evidence bring the trial to a startling conclusion. Days later Wolfson is found dead of an apparent heart attack. To Fallon's eyes, however, the evidence points to murder. The high-powered lawyers of the firm, many in serious conflict with Wolfson, offer an embarrassment of motives. But as Fallon delves more deeply, he becomes convinced that the murder is mysteriously linked to Senator Deauville's trial. As hebegins to investigate he takes Sarah into his confidence, which only makes what he discovers as agonizing as it is dangerous.