The Deerslayer Spiral

Ethan Compton, a handsome, ambitious law student, is planning great things for himself: a successful legal career and marriage to a beautiful and rich young woman, the daughter of the senior partner of a powerful San Francisco law firm. Leaving behind his rough and tragic early life and a fraught military experience, he believes his internship at the prestigious firm is a stepping stone to the top.




Then his superiors arrange a second internship for him at the Public Defenders Office. A young woman, an accountant, lies shot to death in the alley behind San Franciscos trendy Inner Temple Caf. Ethan is asked to defend the suspect charged with her murder, and is instructed to investigate an expert in the philosophy of consciousness and mind control, a notorious and brilliant U.C. Berkeley professor. Why?




A second murder terrifies the city. Then a third. As the killings continue, Ethan suspects that his work is both secretly monitored and sabotaged. By whom?




Ethan suspects the professor of the serial killings. Meanwhile he uncovers corruption at the firm, and is led into a psychologically terrifying journey that draws on post-traumatic stress from his army combat and his mothers brutal murder when he was a young boy. Is he himself the murderer?




With an ending impossible to anticipate, The Deerslayer Spiral is a masterful exploration of cynical double dealing on the part of the legal establishment, the justice system and the government.




Reviewed by Kirkus Reviews as "an arresting story written in confident and erudite prose," Bruce breaks new ground with The Deerslayer Spiral.