BILL ABERNATHY's medical career and freedom are jeopardized when his wife accuses him of raping her and their five-year-old daughter. He hires hot-blooded trial attorney BEA ARCHIBALD to fight for child custody and to defend him against the criminal charges.
Bea's lover and sounding board, Hugh Engle, a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court judge, fills her in on a long-time pimp for sitting judges. The pimp's former law partner, Goldblatt, is a retired judge who's willing to sit as a master on the divorce case, and is Bea's only hope of getting a fair judge.
She deposes those who are conspiring to prosecute Bill. As the evidence stacks up, she hires experts: One to conduct a lie detector test, both to give her some assurance of Bill's truthfulness and to help her persuade the DA of his innocence; another, a forensic psychologist, to administer a penile plethysmograph to determine whether Bill is a pedophile; and a third, to teach Goldblatt about memory development.
Consumed by the embers spreading from one worker to another in the corrupt family-law industry, Bea risks her legal career by helping Bill escape his smoldering tragedy and challenging a vitriolic judge infamous for handing out the maximum sentence in rape cases.
