MONEY TO BURN

When your average first-time thriller writer explains in explicit detail how to rob the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago of $100 million in used money about to be destroyed, you might shrug and think of the latest Bruce Willis movie. But when that writer is a Chicago federal district court judge, you should probably sit up and take notice—especially if he writes as well as Zagel. "We had carried out the first indisputable overt act.... Crashing a van into an armored car and running away is not an innocent stunt." That cool customer is Judge Paul Devine, who starts to veer off the tracks when his beloved wife dies young, her law career tarnished because of a nasty bureaucrat who heads the Federal Reserve Bank. The fact that Dave Brody, Devine's best friend from childhood, is a dedicated paramedic and firefighter who sets fires to supplement his income helps push the judge over the line into full-tilt criminality. As Devine and his three cohorts (Brody, plus Charity Scott and Trimble Young, a sharply rendered married couple who work as bank guards and also have reasons to hate the bureaucrats) test their complicated robbery plan, Zagel incorporates enough scenes of Devine at work in his courtroom to convince readers that there are more subtle ways to influence—and even short-circuit—the judicial system than are dreamt of in our darkest Law and Order fantasies. (June 10)

Forecast:Blurbs from Scott Turow and Nicholas Pileggi will help Zagel get taken seriously. The procedure-heavy narrative appeals more to the intellect than the emotions, but it should rack up respectable summer sales.