The Guilty Plea: A Novel

With The Guilty Plea, a gripping sequel to the international bestseller Old City Hall, Robert Rotenberg has delivered another sharp, suspenseful legal thriller with an explosive conclusion. On the morning his high-profile divorce trial is set to begin, Terrance Wyler, the youngest son of Toronto€s Wyler Food dynasty, is found stabbed to death in the kitchen of his luxurious home. Detective Ari Greene arrives minutes before the press and finds Wyler€s four-year-old son asleep upstairs. Hours later, when Wyler€s wife, Samantha, shows up at her lawyer€s office with a bloody knife wrapped in a towel, the case looks like a straightforward guilty plea. Instead, an open-and-shut case becomes a complex murder trial, full of spite and uncertainty. There€s April Goodling, the Hollywood starlet with whom Terrance had a well-publicized dalliance, and Brandon Legacy, the teenage neighbor who was with Samantha the night of the murder. After a series of devastating cross-examinations, there€s no telling where the jury€s sympathies will lie. As in Old City Hall, Rotenberg€s gift for twists and turns is always astonishing, but his true star remains the courtroom: the tension, disclosures, and machinations that drive this trial straight to its unpredictable verdict.