Black River — G.M. Ford

There is the law, and there is justice. The two are not always the same....

There is no stronger argument for the death penalty than Nicholas Balagula -- but so far the elusive sociopath has escaped punishment through ruthless intimidation, jury tampering, and the fortuitous deaths of chief prosecution witnesses. Now the bloodthirsty West Coast crime boss has been charged with sixty-three counts of murder, and rogue journalist Frank Corso is the only nonparticipant allowed to observe the closed proceedings, which has placed the reclusive writer uncomfortably in the center ring of the most crazed media circus to hit Seattle in years.

Then personal tragedy strikes in the midst of the madness, knocking Corso's carefully protected world out of its orbit. While following her own leads toward another unpunished crime, photojournalist Meg Dougherty -- once Corso's lover and still his dearest friend -- reaches an abrupt and calculated dead end on a bleak and rainy Washington night, leaving her broken, bloodied, and more dead than alive.

With the one person in the world Corso truly cares about clinging weakly to life in the I.C.U. -- and with the increasingly likely possibility of Balagula taking yet another walk -- the angry lone-wolf reporter is determined to identify all guilty parties and make them pay, by his own hand if necessary. But the black river of lies, secrets, corruption, and death surrounding the Balagula trial is much deeper and more dangerous than even Corso anticipated....