Published 1974. A good, sturdy copy. Despite its age, the pages do not look yellow. The edges show some very minor dirt or other markings. The front of the dust jacket has a very small tear at the bottom. Does not look like it has been read much. No dog ears.
Can a man get away with murder? Will the law help him do so?
Jonathan Pike is a young drifter, a Vietnam veteran, highly intelligent, but amoral – and a self-admitted liar who is accused of rape and murder. In spite of the strenuous pre-trial efforts of his lawyer, Gordon Guthrie, Pike is convicted, after Guthrie’s senior partner, nominally in charge of the defence in court, bungles the case.
But Guthrie’s burning ambition is to succeed as a savage, brilliant defence lawyer. After eight years of retrials and postponements, during which both Pike and Guthrie have become national figures, he faces the ultimate challenge in his career – to reverse Pike’s conviction. To do so he has to fight not only the overwhelming evidence of an eye-witness, but the formidable opposition of the prosecutor whose concern for law and order is superseded by a personal, intense loathing for Pike; and the Judge himself, Gugthrie’s childhood rival, who ultimately cares only for justice.
Bart Picer, author of the bestselling Act of Anger, has produced in The Adversary a gripping novel of crime and punishment, in which a tortuous legal crusade becomes a cause celebre.
