Wrongful Death (Book)

A man crushed between locomotives at a Wyoming switching yard...the mass murder of patients in a hospital in the former Yugoslavia...Attorney Elliot Stone was drawn into court for the trials ensuing both tragedies while trapped in a tragedy of his own, the death of his young wife, Kathleen. After two years prosecuting Balkan war crimes, he returns to Colorado to remake his life. When June, who reminds Stone of his wife, ends up in a Denver hospital comatose from a brutal beating, the court appoints him as her conservator. He gradually comes to terms with events in the presence of this helpless woman. Until June dies...

With June's daughter, her lawyer, the forensic scientist, and members of the Exhumation Unit at the war-crimes tribunal, Stone starts piecing together a three-part Chinese puzzle -- how June was assaulted, why she died five months later, what was behind the string of suspicious deaths at her hospital. And the one question that echoes through it all: How can the good do evil?

The startling answers are borne by ghosts from tragedies past -- and by the ghost of June herself -- as a spellbinding wrongful-death trial unfolds and the worlds of European war crimes and killings in a Colorado hospital converge in one twist after another.

Of Baine Kerr's Harmful Intent, Kirkus Reviews wrote, "Kerr delivers what legal-intrigue fans crave: crackling sus-pense up top, compelling moral problems floating beneath the surface with an iceberg's menace." His eagerly anticipated new novel takes intrigue, menace, and moral complexity to a new dimension, an exploration of the nature of evil itself. In an intricate and supremely suspenseful tale of murder, revenge, justice, and, ultimately, love, Kerr renders courts, hospitals, and mass grave sites with utter authenticity. The electric courtroom action and powerful reverberations of provocative themes will haunt long after the triple mystery is solved.