Outskirts Press, INC.

Ryan Browne, the most successful trial lawyer in his state (purposely unnamed), celebrates a big win at a notorious strip club, The Proud Stallion. There he meets a stripper, Celeste L’Hoir. On his way with Celeste to have sex, while driving drunk, he crashes his car. He is charged with felony d.u.i., which carries 2–20 years in the penitentiary. His wife, Tania, is so angry at his stupidity and attempted adultery that she refuses to post bail for him. Thus, Ryan can’t get out of the putrid county jail. He decides to represent himself, believing that the useless public defender would only sell him down the river. But then, the great unrequited love of Ryan’s life, investigator Jessie Parker, agrees to help Ryan. As Jessie and Ryan investigate the case, they discover a wealth of corruption fueled by an incredible degree of prosecutorial misconduct and malfeasance by Ryan’s personal enemy, prosecutor David Schlegel, and his boss, the District Attorney. But luck is with Ryan, most notably in the form of Judge Laurie Linton, a brilliant, quirky judge who uses her “thinking chair” to figure out the legal solutions to the case. With a confluence of a number of forces – Jessie, Judge Linton, Ryan’s son, Beau, and Ryan’s jail-house friends, Buddy McCall, Rodney, and Unit Sergeant Mullen – Ryan reaches a form of redemption. In the genre of legal thrillers, this one vividly depicts what actually happens in a trial.