The Big Law - Couverture souple

The Big Law's intricate mechanics are set in motion by one fatal choice: Broker's naive ex-wife Caren decides to blow the whistle on her feckless husband, Keith Angland, a St. Paul cop who's moonlighting as an informant for the Chicago mob. Unwisely for her, she confides in Tom James, a disaffected reporter nursing dreams of the perfect crime. Seeing a way out of his dead-end life and into his dreams, Tom cajoles Caren into entrusting him with the suitcase full of greenbacks the mob has paid her informant husband. When Caren is killed, Tom frames Angland, absconds with the suitcase, runs to the FBI (known to its employees as the Big Law), and wangles himself a berth in the Witness Protection Program. Only Broker senses something amiss in Tom's testimony, and he sets out to find the truth. But to do that, he must find Tom, who has the Big Law and a big suitcase full of cash on his side.

Logan probes the inner workings of the Witness Protection Program. as no novelist has before. He also brings to this tale an unsurpassed knack for combining white-knuckle action with subtle characterizations and direct, lyrical prose. The Big Law proves how thoroughly he deserved to be called "one of the best of the new thriller breed." (Publishers Weekly)

When former cop Phil Broker's naïve ex-wife, Caren, blows the whistle on her feckless second husband, Keith Angland, a St. Paul cop making a cool $2 million moonlighting for the Chicago mob, she unwittingly signs her own death warrant. Unwisely for Caren, she not only shared her troubles with Broker, she also told Tom James, a reporter with fantasies of pulling off the perfect crime. Inspired by the $2 million payoff she entrusted to his safekeeping, Tom kills Caren in a brilliant frame-up that leaves her crooked cop-husband to take the fall.

Covering all the angles, Tom runs to the FBI -- "the Big Law" -- and wangles a new life in the Witness Protection Program. But Tom's perfect plan doesn't count on Broker. Hard-edged and relentless, Broker smells a rat and is determined to set things right. But to succeed, he's got to locate Tom -- a clever man with a new identity, a suitcase full of cash, and the Big Law on his side.