Julesburg Public Library

There's nothing easier-or more dangerous-than falling into bed with an old lover. Especially when you're Victor Carl. Once upon a time, Victor was engaged to a woman named Julia. She was beautiful and elegant and not the kind of woman to end up with a second-rate lawyer on the edge of insolvency. Now she's back, Julia's husband has been murdered, her fingerprints are all over the crime scene, and $1.7 million in cash is missing.

An old law school classmate of Carl Victor is accused of killing his fiancée, a woman who once mesmerized Carl himself. A quest to finding the real identity of the dead woman takes Carl from Philadelphia to Las Vegas to the valleys of West Virginia and back again.

A beautiful young woman is dead, her husband convicted of the murder. In seeking a new trial for the husband, defense attorney Victor Carl must confront not only a determined prosecutor and a police detective who might have set up his client, but also a strange little busybody named Bob. Bob has the aspiration, one could even say compulsion, to help those around him. And it usually works out well for all concerned, except when it ends in blood. But...

Payment in advance lures cheerfully selfish criminal defense attorney Victor Carl to seek a new trial for Franȯis Dub,̌ a charming French chef convicted of murdering his beautiful wife.