The evidence was... damning. John Maudsley had had both motive and opportunity to strangle the elderly, wealthy aunt with whom he'd had a falling out. Around this defense of what seemed like a heartbreakingly hopeless case, Edward Grierson has constructed a novel that is taut, persuasive and appealing... The climactic events of the trial's closing hours and the maddening wait for the verdict of the jurors... are conveyed in pages of inexorably mounting tension.