A Handy Death

A lawyer agrees to defend an ex-baseball prospect accused of murder

In 1964, nineteen-year-old Billy Dupaul was on his way to stardom. A modest farm boy with a lightning fastball, he had just signed a record contract with the New York Mets when a single gunshot changed his life forever. Dupaul went down on an attempted murder rap, and the Mets washed their hands of him. Eight years later, the man he was said to have shot drops dead when a shard of bullet works its way into his brain. After eight summers in Attica, Billy is about to be tried for murder.

After throwing him to the wolves in 1964, the vice president of the Mets shows surprising interest in the case and hires Hank Ross, one of the toughest defense attorneys in Manhattan, to save the boy from the chair. It’s an impossible assignment, and Ross will find the case has more bite than any big-league curve.