Briley Lester, a junior associate with a prestigious Chicago law firm, is handed a career-making case. Jeffrey Tomassi, the son of Antonio Tomassi, a major client of the firm, has been found dead, and his wife is accused of his murder. Briley is excited at the prospect, but somewhat daunted: She has never before handled a murder case, usually being assigned low-profile matters such as shop-lifting and assault. The dead man was a State senator and on the verge of announcing his campaign to run for the U.S. Congress. Antonio is a wealthy patriarch with reputed ties to organized crime. What Briley doesn’t know is that her obvious experience is exactly why she was given this case. Antonio has directed that the lawyers “make sure that everything’s done by the book. But don’t allow her to walk free of that courtroom with my son’s blood on her hands.” Accordingly, she is given almost no budget or assistance in the preparation for the looming trial.
Briley has lost some of her idealism. “She used to dream about making a difference in the world, but three years of dealing with criminal defendants has taught her that the practice of law would be far more enjoyable if she didn’t have to deal with so many guilty people.” But she gradually becomes convinced of her client’s innocence, despite the overwhelming evidence against her. Erin is unwavering in her claim that she did not murder her husband. Which would be no problem at all for the reader to accept, except for the fact that the opening two pages of the book describe a woman slipping out of bed and injecting her sleeping husband with a lethal dose of insulin.
Jeffrey Tomassi was thirty-five years old and, other than the fact that he was diabetic, in excellent health. His wife, Erin, had for the five years of their marriage been well taken care of, if one ignores the fact that for all that time she was the victim of her husband’s constant verbal and physical abuse.
The novel proceeds at a rather deliberate pace up until the time the trial commences, at which point the suspense intensifies and the reader is fully engaged in the courtroom battle and rooting for the accused woman. The scenes were mostly very realistic, with one exception: I found it nearly delusional for Erin, on the eve of closing arguments, to find herself thinking when a guard approaches her cell that “maybe the judge has decided that the trial was a mistake and she’s free to go.”
Erin’s tenacity and legal and human instincts are impressive, and the final pages see her heading in a new direction, one which should be on display in what one can hope will be a follow-up novel, if not a series. The book is recommended.
