1999 Barry Award for Best First Novel (nominee)
1999 Edgar Award for Best First Novel (nominee)
The truth doesn't always set you free. Sometimes it takes a damn good lawyer.
Big-boned, farm-bred, and fresh out of law school, Nora Lumsey has just landed a great job as an Indiana judge's law clerk. Then the Dexter Hinton case lands in her lap: An elderly white woman dies in a drive-by shooting. Two black kids are in the car. Dexter, ten years old and deaf, confesses. He gets fifty-five years.
Now the boy's distraught grandfather has written an appeal, and Nora's job is to draft the judge's denial. Turn the key and throw Dexter away.
That's her dilemma. The amateur appeal raises the wrong arguments. Nora knows the right ones. She also knows Dexter is innocent, convicted with lies and racism. Legally, she's forbidden to help. Morally, a big-boned woman is born to meddle...and perhaps risk everything for a young boy's life.
Genre: Mystery
Big-boned, farm-bred, and fresh out of law school, Nora Lumsey has just landed a great job as an Indiana judge's law clerk. Then the Dexter Hinton case lands in her lap: An elderly white woman dies in a drive-by shooting. Two black kids are in the car. Dexter, ten years old and deaf, confesses. He gets fifty-five years.
Now the boy's distraught grandfather has written an appeal, and Nora's job is to draft the judge's denial. Turn the key and throw Dexter away.
That's her dilemma. The amateur appeal raises the wrong arguments. Nora knows the right ones. She also knows Dexter is innocent, convicted with lies and racism. Legally, she's forbidden to help. Morally, a big-boned woman is born to meddle...and perhaps risk everything for a young boy's life.
Genre: Mystery
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