Closing Arguments — Frederick Busch

Closing Arguments is the story of a shocking murder trial, a disintegrating marriage, an obsessive love affair. Not a day goes by but Mark Brennan remembers Vietnam. In some ways he seems a textbook case of post-traumatic combat stress. Brennan carries this burden with him into his upstate New York law practice, his relationships with his children, and his tense marriage. But when he is asked, pro bono, to defend a young woman accused of murdering her lover in bed, Mark's sense of impending recognition starts to close in. As he becomes obsessively involved with the thrillingly dangerous Estella, Mark pilots his life to its outermost limits.

Closing Arguments is a disturbing novel about deception, betrayal, violence, and the imagination of violence.