About this book:

Before the Verdict is a legal thriller that follows Anna Mercer, a weary but tenacious public defender who has traded a lucrative corporate career for the messy reality of the justice system. Her life is upended when she receives a frantic call to take on the emergency appeal of Daniel Hale, a high-profile biotech CEO recently convicted of a fatal hit-and-run. Hale insists he is the victim of an elaborate frame-up, a claim dismissed by the jury but one that ignites Anna’s long-dormant sense of purpose.

Driven by a series of anonymous threats and a gut feeling that the official narrative is too perfect, Anna begins to unravel the case. She quickly discovers a web of corruption that extends far beyond a simple traffic fatality. Key pieces of evidence start to crumble under her scrutiny: the official timeline is riddled with unexplained gaps, the DNA evidence from the crime lab is tainted by a rushed and suspicious chain of custody, and a mysterious red sedan appears in security footage, a vehicle the original investigation conveniently ignored. The conspiracy deepens as she traces the money, connecting the fixer, Marcus Ellery, and the compromised forensic expert to a rival pharmaceutical company that had billions to lose if Hale’s revolutionary biotech patent was approved.

Anna’s investigation draws the attention of powerful and ruthless enemies. She is subjected to escalating intimidation, from cryptic text messages to a break-in at her office. Witnesses are coerced, a key private investigator vanishes, and another is found dead in an apparent suicide that Anna is convinced is murder. Each step she takes is met with a new wall of obstruction, forcing her to operate on the fringes of the law as she races against the appeal deadline. She is forced to go off-grid, trusting only her investigator brother and a principled detective who begins to see that her own case was compromised. The stakes become terrifyingly personal as the conspiracy moves to silence anyone who can expose the truth.

As the final hearing approaches, the conspiracy’s cover-up implodes. A desperate witness comes forward with a confession about staging a suicide note, while a federal investigation, running a parallel sting operation, moves to indict the man at the heart of the conspiracy. In a dramatic courtroom showdown, Anna systematically dismantles the false confession of the lab expert, forcing him to reveal that he was a government informant in a much larger case. The truth is finally exposed, leading to the federal indictment of the powerful financier who ordered the hit and the lawyer who orchestrated the cover-up. In the end, Daniel Hale is exonerated, but the victory belongs to Anna, who has not only saved an innocent man but exposed a deadly network of lies, proving that sometimes the most important verdict is the one that comes before the final judgment.