Welcome to Los Angeles, 1993. Where murder is entertainment, and everyone wants a front-row seat. Charlie Trust thought he'd found paradise on California's Carbon Beach. Then one morning he watches as sheriff's deputies swarm the yellow house just down the sand, and he sees the two bodies being carried away in black bags.
Arnie Duncan and his wife have been shot to death in their living room. No forced entry. Nothing stolen. Just execution-style murders that send shockwaves through Malibu's golden times.
The cops think they know who did it: Jerry Duncan, the couple's 23-year-old son. He says he found the bodies. He called 911. He stands to inherit millions. Gotta be him, right? Case closed.
The city is already obsessed with Lyle and Eric Menendez, the Beverly Hills brothers who are accused of shotgunning their parents to death because they were impatient to claim their inheritance. This is just the same thing all over again, isn't it? Of course it is. The Menendez trial is about to begin, and the similarities are too perfect for the media to talk about anything else. The media convicts Jerry even before he's arrested.
In Los Angeles in 1993, perception is reality. The truth is whatever the cameras say it is. And right now, every camera in LA is pointed at Jerry Duncan.
But when Jerry Duncan sits on Charlie's deck just down the beach from where his parents were murdered, he seems terrified, and Charlie thinks he sees something the media doesn't. A scared kid who's probably innocent.
That makes the question for Charlie a really simple one. Can he stand between the media mob and Jerry Duncan for long enough to prove it?
From the author of HABEAS CORPUS and CONTEMPT OF COURT comes the third riveting installment in the Charlie Trust series. A razor-sharp legal thriller that captures the time when television turned justice into entertainment, and trying to avoid the spotlight might end up being the most dangerous choice of all.
