Indefensible
A Novel
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3.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
“Complex and intelligent, fantastically well-plotted” (New York Times bestselling author John Lescroart), this taut legal thriller follows the trail of a man determined to protect his community—and his family—at any cost.
Sometimes a simple walk in the woods can lead you down the deadliest of trails…
When birdwatcher Cassandra Randall stumbles upon two men digging what appears to be a grave in a state park, she immediately reports it to the authorities. Federal prosecutor Nick Davis is initially incredulous about her claims, but he agrees to investigate. To his surprise, the far-fetched account turns up a body, and Nick is drawn into a case that will shake both his morals and his personal life to their very core.
One body quickly leads to another. The danger Cassandra has uncovered is just the beginning of a game of deadly stakes that implicates small-time drug dealers, petty thieves turned murderers, domestic abuse perpetrators, child pornographers, the highest offices of the legal system…and a criminal who is closer to Davis than he can even imagine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Goodman's stellar first novel, a legal thriller, 53-year-old federal prosecutor Nick Davis is beguiled by Cassandra Randall, an attractive birdwatcher who happens to have witnessed a surreptitious burial in an unnamed state park that could be in New England. Cassandra guides the authorities to the site, where they unearth the body of a young man, who turns out to be "a shy and likable kid who was selling pot to pay his college tuition." More deaths follow. Nick, who heads the criminal division of his district's U.S. Attorney's office, turns for help to such distinctive supporting characters as his world-weary FBI agent friend, Chip d'Villafranca, and colleague Upton Cruthers, his probable successor if Nick gets a Circuit Court judgeship. A "rotten summer" of killings turns into a bitter autumn of self-doubt for Nick, who wrestles with both the prosecutor's sin, failure of objectivity, and the defender's, failure of loyalty. Nick knows that he must hold fast to the law, until he learns the cost.
