First Victim
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The line between justice and revenge blurs when a judge takes the law into her own hands.
The Honorable Alice D. McKerrity is no stranger to violence. From the bench at Manhattan Supreme, she has seen the most hardened killers pass through her courtroom. But there’s something about this trial—a defendant charged with the murder of a pregnant woman—that affects her as no other case ever has. Her chaotic, stressful home life only adds to her mounting feelings of panic and fear. She’s also harboring a secret that if exposed could have far-reaching ramifications both personally and professionally. And now, unbeknownst to Alice, her daughter has begun a search for her biological father.
As the trial progresses, Alice’s life starts to unravel. Nightmares she suffered as a girl return with a vengeance. Phantom sightings torment her. Is she being paranoid? Or are the specters real? Almost at the breaking point, she begins to doubt her own sanity. Then she makes a shocking discovery that sends her on a collision course with her past and a terror-filled night in the woods in Upstate New York. Confronted with the unspeakable, she must face a decades-buried truth as she fights for her survival against a cunning adversary that forces her to question everything she ever believed about herself . . . and tests her limits as a woman, a judge, and a mother.
Narrated from the perspectives of three women—Alice, her daughter, and Alice’s girlhood friend—First Victim is a suspenseful tale of guilt, justice, and long-awaited retribution.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This gripping legal thriller from Babitt (Saving Grace) examines the fine line between justice and revenge. Alice D. McKerrity, a New York City judge, is presiding over the trial of William Henry Young, who's "charged with first-degree murder for killing a woman during the course of committing two other crimes: rape and torture." As his victim was pregnant at the time of her death, the case is garnering even more than the customary attention in the press. Young's demand to act as his own attorney puts more pressure on the judge, whose home life is also becoming increasingly stressful as her husband's early-onset dementia worsens and her relationship with her daughter, Alexis, unravels. Alice, who starts having horrific nightmares, begins to suspect Young may have committed similar crimes before, though a search of his record doesn't reveal any evidence of this. Told from the points of views of Alice, Alexis, and a childhood friend of Alice's, this vivid courtroom drama builds to a harrowing action-packed finale in the woods of upstate New York, the location of Alice's worst nightmares. Psychological thriller fans will be well satisfied.
