Based on his own experience presiding over a 2000 Massachusetts capital case, the first in the state in more than fifty years, this legal thriller offers an unprecedented inside view of a federal death penalty trial.

Plot: When a drive-by shooting in Holyoke, Massachusetts, claims the lives of a Puerto Rican drug dealer and a hockey mom volunteering at an inner-city clinic, the police arrest a rival gang member.

He must referee the clash of an ambitious female prosecutor and a brilliant veteran defense attorney in a high-stress environment of community outrage, media pressure, vengeful gang members, and a romantic entanglement that threatens to capsize his trial—not to mention the most dangerous force of all: the unexpected.

Cranmer insists the illicit material found by the agents isn’t his, but the charge against him appears airtight, and his academic specialty—the life and work of controversial author Lewis Carroll, creator of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—convinces investigators he’s lying.

Presiding over the case against Professor Cranmer, U.S. District Judge David Norcross fears his daily confrontation with evil has made him too jaded to become a husband and father.