Politics has always been a dirty game.
Now justice is, too.
In a crowded courtroom in Mississipi, a jury returns a shocking verdict against a
chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste into a small town's water supply,
causing the worst "cancer cluster"in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi
Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it.
Who are the nine? How will they vote? Can one be replaced before the case is ultimately
decided?
The chemical company is owned by a Wall Street predator named Carl Trudeau, and Mr.
Trudeau is convinced the Court is not friendly enough. With judicial elections looming,
he decides to try to purchase himself a seat on the Court. The cost is a few million
dollars, a drop in the bucket for a billionaire like Mr. Trudeau. Through an intricate
web of conspiracy and deceit, his political operatives recruit a young, unsuspecting
candidate. They finance him, manipulate him, market him, and mold him into a potential
Supreme Court justice. Their Supreme Court justice.
The Appeal is a powerful, timely, and shocking story of political and legal intrigue,
a story that will leave readers unable to think about our electoral process or judicial
system in quite the same way ever again.

PART ONE
THE VERDICT
Chapter 1
The jury was ready.
After forty-two hours of deliberations that followed seventy-one days of trial that
included 530 hours of testimony from four dozen witnesses, and after a lifetime of
sitting silently as the lawyers haggled and the judge lectured and the spectators
watched like hawks for telltale signs, the jury was ready. Locked away in the jury
room, secluded and secure, ten of them proudly signed their names to the verdict
while the other two pouted in their corners, detached and miserable in their dissension.
There were hugs and smiles and no small measure of self-congratulation because they
had survived this little war and could now march proudly back into the arena with
a decision they had rescued through sheer determination and the dogged pursuit of
compromise. Their ordeal was over; their civic duty complete. They had served above
and beyond. They were ready.
The foreman knocked on the door and rustled Uncle Joe from his slumbers. Uncle Joe,
the ancient bailiff, had guarded them while he also arranged their meals, heard their
complaints, and quietly slipped their messages to the judge. In his younger years,
back when his hearing was better, Uncle Joe was rumored to also eavesdrop on his juries
through a flimsy pine door he and he alone had selected and installed. But his listening days
were over, and, as he had confided to no one but his wife, after the ordeal of this particular
trial he might just hang up his old pistol once and for all. The strain of controlling
justice was wearing him down.
He smiled and said, "That's great. I'll get the judge," as if the judge were somewhere
in the bowels of the courthou...

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