Judging Angels

the long version

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 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.