The Long-Shot Trial

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“It’s a surefire winner.” — Publishers Weekly Arthur Beauchamp is mortified. A biography of his early career as a lawyer paints him as a dissolute womanizer. So he sweats over a me moir that he hopes will set the record straight about a headline murder case he fought as a starry-eyed young lawyer in 1966. A trial that seemed bound to mark him as a pathetic loser. The background: a young housemaid is violently sexually assaulted by her employer, a callous, vindictive multi-millionaire. She shoots him point blank and tearfully confesses to police. It’s an open-and-shut case of first-degree murder — or so it seems. Haunted by having bungled his only previous murder case, Arthur is pressed into service by his firm to take on a sure loser. But the odds shift as the trial speeds through explosive twists and turns. While writing his memoir, Arthur learns that it’s not easy to raise a defence against his social gaffes and booze-induced sex scandals, especially as he runs afoul of the quirky characters who inhabit his supposedly idyllic Garibaldi Island. Show more