A Show of Violence

the long version

Antony Maitland #23 Antony Maitland, barrister and very confidential detective, reluctantly journeys to a grey town in the English midlands to defend a young boy who is, on the face of it, guilty of murder and art theft. The boy is mysteriously unwilling to say anything on his own behalf. As long as the boy refused to speak there was no possible line of defense. In order to save his client from what, Maitland finally realizes, will be a gross miscarriage of justice, he has to piece together the boy's troubled past and in the process, stumbles across a web of criminal intent in which the boy is just one victim -- and Maitland is the other.