As the story opens, that maxim is embodied by its main character, Bartholomew Crane, an amoral, cocaine-abusing defence lawyer. His drive to win seems less a matter of competition or ego than some sort of neurotic imperative. Crane's unsavoury bosses, Lyle, Gederov, and Associate, (or Lie, Get 'Em Off, and Associate, as the joke goes), hand him his first murder trial, a grotesque case involving the disappearance of two schoolgirls in Northern Ontario. The accused is the doomed girls' English teacher, who recently ended up on the losing end of a custody battle involving his young daughter. When Crane arrives in Murdoch, Ontario, he finds his client, one Thomas Tripp, either unable or unwilling to cooperate. He must then contend with a variety of strange and very suspicious townsfolk as he attempts to unearth the facts himself. His discovery of the town's dark legend unleashes Crane's own demons, causing him to lose track of reality and the case and sending him down an unfamiliar path: a search for the truth.
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