A junior associate in a big Portland, Or law firm gets caught in the middle of a case between some families with deformed kids and a large pharmaceutical company. In a twist from normal plots, the bad guys in this case are the defense attorneys who are planting evidence to get the company to settle to save face even though there is no real factual basis for their case. People are getting killed and the case is connected to a series of murders in Arizona which become linked. It was a good if somewhat predictable (at the end) plot, but the author did a good job of keeping you guessing.
I enjoyed this story. keeps you reading, wanting to know what happens next. It has a little twist at the end even though you can figure out the main theme the details are a little more trickier.
Daniel Ames, a blue-collar associate at a preppy, white-shoe law firm, gets snookered by a pretty colleague into reviewing thousands of pages of documents. The client, a pharmaceutical company, is charged with falsifying test results on a new drug that appears to cause horrendous birth defects. Daniel is sure the company didn't do it, but among all the documents he overlooks a letter that could destroy his client's defense. The opposing counsel gets hold of it, and the next thing you know, Daniel's smack in the middle of a murder as well as the attendant legal fraud and chicanery. Who else, besides its manufacturer, wants the truth about the drug trials covered up? Whose body, charred almost beyond recognition, was found in the lab along with a score of dead test monkeys? And what's the connection between a double kidnapping and murder that happened years ago in Arizona and the headline-grabbing lawyer that's trying to pin the blame on Daniel's client for the drug's terrible effects?
