From publicity material: Deeply in debt to loan sharks and still reeling form the death of his ex-wife a year earlier, obituary writer Billy Povich serves as a juror in the trail of Peter Shadd, who shot a fellow inmate to death when both were trying to escape form prison.

Billy gets in too deep, through, when he starts to wonder if this clear-cut case is really murder. Then the only other juror who questions the case takes a nosedive out of a parking garage, and a man in a fedora begins tailing Billy. Through his friendship with a social worker he meets along the way, Billy starts piecing together the truth.

(Source: St. Martin's Minotaur)