Rudy Baylor is a newly qualified lawyer: he has one case and one case alone, to save himself from his mounting debts. It is a bad faith case against a giant insurance company which could have saved a young man's life, but has instead refused to pay the claim until it is too late. The settlement could be worth millions of dollars, but there is one problem: Rudy has never argued a case in court before, and he's up against the most expensive lawyers money can buy.

Adam Hall is 26 years old and in his first year at a top Chicago law firm. He volunteers for the toughest assignment any lawyer could ask for. His prospective client doesn't want Adam or his law firm. He is an unrepentant and outspoken racist with a violent past. He is on Death Row for the murder of two Jewish children in a horrific bombing in 1967. Why would he take on Adam, a complete novice, to defend him? And why would Adam want his case so desperately?

Trumble is a minimum security federal prison, home to the usual assortment of relatively harmless criminals - drug dealers, bank robbers, swindlers, embezzlers, tax evaders, and three former judges who call themselves The Brethren. They meet each day in the law library where they handle cases for other inmates, practice law without a licence, and sometimes dispense jailhouse justice. And they spend hours writing letters. They are fine-tuning a mail scam, and it's really starting to work. The money is pouring in. Then their little scam goes awry. It ensnares the wrong victim.

The law student was young and had his dreams. He'd qualified third in his class at Harvard, now offers poured in from every law firm in America. The firm was small, but well respected. They were prepared to match, and then exceed, Mitch's wildest dreams, eighty thousand a year, a BMW and a low-interest mortgage. Soon the house, the car and the job were his. Then the nightmares begin: the secret files, the bugs in the new bedroom, the mysterious deaths of colleagues, and the millions of dollars of mob money pouring through the office into the Cayman Islands, dollars that the FBI would do anything to trace.

In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colourful weekly newspapers, 'The Ford County Times', went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23-year old college drop out, Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details and his newspaper began to prosper.

Clanton, Mississippi. The life of a year ten-year-old girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. The mostly white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime. Until her black father acquires an assault rifle - and takes justice into his own outraged hands. For ten days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as young defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client's life....and then his own.........