The nightmare begins with the discovery of a newborn baby, apparently murdered then casually discarded with the city's refuse. Butch Karp, chief assistant DA for New York County, is ordered to prosecute the baby's fifteen-year-old Hispanic mother by his boss, listening to the public outcry.
Meanwhile, Butch's wife, Marlene Ciampi, has returned to practising law after spending time as a private investigator. Her first case, in a small Delaware town, is to defend the middle-class teenage mother of another dead baby, found in a motel dumpster. The girl claims it was stillborn, but the infant's father is singing a different tune, under pressure from an ambitious DA.
On different sides of an incendiary national debate, Butch and Marlene suddenly find their own teenage daughter, Lucy, at the centre of a horrifying crime . . .
In 'True Justice', Robert K Tanenbaum investigates a maelstrom of big-city politics and small-two values, where justice is sacrificed to the twin gods of public perception and expediency.
