Indefensible

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. Agent: Janet Reid, FinePrint Literary Management. (June)