Detective Max Rupert

A former Medal of Valor winner, Minnesota detective Alexander Rupert is now under subpoena by a grand jury on suspicion of corruption. So when he's asked to look into the false identity of a car-accident victim named James Putnam, a man who in fact died fifteen years earlier, Rupert sees a potentially big case and an opportunity to regain his respectability. But the investigation puts him in the path of :the Beast," the nom de guerre of Drago Basta, a cunning veteran of the Balkan wars and a sociopath assassin who has been searching for Putnam for years. Putnam had something that Basta still wants. If Rupert's life was in shambles before, it's now also in danger. Threatened by the Beast and suspecting his wife of cheating, Rupert falls for the seductions of the dead man's former girlfriend. As he feels his life spinning out of control, his steadfast brother and fellow police detective Max may be Rupert's last hope.

Detective Max Rupert's and attorney Boady Sanden's friendship is being pushed to the breaking point. Max is convinced that Jennavieve Pruitt was killed by her husband, Ben. Boady is equally convinced that Ben, his client, is innocent. As the case unfolds, the two are forced to confront their own personal demons. Max is still struggling with the death of his wife four years earlier, and the Pruitt case stirs up old memories. Boady hasn't taken on a defense case since the death of an innocent client, a man Boady believes he could have saved but didn't. Now he is back in court, with student Lila Nash at his side, and he's determined to redeem himself for having failed in the past. Vividly told from two opposing perspectives, the truth about the stunning death of Jennavieve Pruitt remains a mystery until the very end.

Homicide Detective Max Rupert never fully accepted his wife's death, even when he believed that a reckless hit and run driver was the cause. But when he learns that in fact she was murdered, he devotes himself to hunting down her killers. Most of his life he had thought of himself as a decent man. But now he's so consumed with thoughts of retribution that he questions whether he will take that last step and enact the vengeance he longs for. On a frozen lake near the U. S.-Canadian border, he wrestles with a decision that could change his life forever, as his hatred threatens to turn him into the kind of person he has spent a career bringing to justice.