Judging Angels

Christmas Eve finds renowned, but now disgraced, defense lawyer George Able paying a final visit to his two children, Brian and Sandy. It is a final visit of a different sort to his estranged wife and her lover: George has a .38 in his coat pocket. Later that night, he finds himself on a deserted highway in deep dark country with missing bullets and missing time. It looks like a Christmas Miracle, especially when he meets a beautiful redhead who offers him a second chance. But the seemingly naive Red Morgan proves to be a troubling mix of love, lethality and, possibly, lunacy.

When George’s daughter is kidnapped by a man who might be associated with Morgan, the Able family and the criminal justice system are faced with a threat they are not equipped to handle. As a rescue attempt snowballs into a crime spree from the top of Illinois to its tip, a family must put aside its problems even as moral compromises undermine their good intentions. And while Red Morgan is too useful to send away, her dream of a white Vegas wedding with George faces one obstacle...

Judging Angels is the first volume in The Rubricatae Chronicles. It has been awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2017 New York Book Festival. The novel draws on police procedural, urban fantasy, and heroic quest to provide the reader with an original Catholic psychological thriller that blends genres and provides more twists and tension than a murder trial. Timothy Capps, a recognized death penalty defense expert, tells this exciting, yet thoughtful, tale with the relish of a seasoned lawyer’s closing argument. And just as trials must probe the motives of defendants, the reader will discover that the real story is on the inside: ordinary people tempted to do the worst things for the best reasons.