1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The office of the public defender is not known as a training ground for bright young

litigators. Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues,
dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young
man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many
senseless murders that hit D.C. every week.

As he digs into the background of his
client, Clay stumbles on a conspiracy too horrible to believe. He suddenly finds
himself in the middle of a complex case against one of the largest pharmaceutical
companies in the world, looking at the kind of enormous settlement that would totally
change his life-that would make him, almost overnight, the legal profession’s newest
king of torts…