Jury of One Hardcover - 2004

by David Ellis

An edge-of-the-seat legal thriller about a woman who learns the boy she's defending for murder may be the child she gave up for adoption years earlier-from an Edgar Award winner who belongs "in the ring with Scott Turow" (Kirkus Reviews).

Life Sentence, David Ellis's follow-up to his Edgar-winning debut, Line of Vision, inspired great admiration from lovers of courtroom suspense. "Ellis balances plot, setting, pacing, characterization, and surprises in just the right measure to create a compelling high-stakes drama," said The Washington Post Book World.

In Jury of One, Shelly Trotter, the daughter of the state's governor and a children's-rights advocate, is thrust into a world in which she's completely unschooled-the criminal court. The defendant is a seventeen-year-old former client who is accused of killing a cop. Shelly soon learns that this boy was caught in the middle of an undercover operation to trap corrupt officers. But what was his role in the sting? The target or the bait? And what does the prosecution really have against him?

Then comes the shocker: The kid says he is the son she gave up in a private adoption kept hush-hush by her father, who had political ambitions beyond their small town. As the evidence mounts, Shelly finds that nothing-not legal ethics, not her father's reelection campaign-will stop her from keeping her son off death row-for with this client, she is truly a jury of one.