In the midst of fraud and deception, murder and betrayal, Darcy
battles a legal system that seems more adept at administering injustice
than in protecting the innocent.
Sometimes a simple plea bargain is not what it appears to be, as
criminal defense attorney Darcy Cole learns when he takes the case of
Harry Feigler, a Chicago attorney who specializes in expunging the
records of men who have been caught soliciting prostitutes. Sometimes
also, Darcy reminds his associate Kathy Haddon, when a husband regularly
comes home in the evening smelling like a bar and claiming to have been
out with "friends," there may be no cause for alarm. Sometimes, too, a
black man accused of murder in an apparently open-and-shut drug case has
been set up and is innocent, and a beautiful, apparently distraught
young woman who reports the disappearance of her boyfriend to the police
is lying to distract attention from a real crime.
Sometimes even a middle-aged police officer whose life is spiraling
toward disaster discovers the inner qualities of character that
attracted him to law enforcement in the first place, and the luck of the
draw in emergency room physicians brings together a disenchanted lawyer
and an overworked doctor in a romance that sizzles from the moment they
first meet. These story lines, which at first glance appear to have no
connection to one another, come together with high drama and humor in
Plea Bargain. Nothing, it seems, is as it appears, and Darcy must sift
through the illusions and deceptions to come to the actual truth.
