The murder rule: a novel

"Hannah has abandoned everything-her trajectory as a law student, her childhood home and caring for her ill mother-for the chance to work with the Innocence Project, a prestigious coalition of investigators who fight to free wrongly convicted prisoners. Hannah's ambitions are set on the program's highest-stakes case in years: a convicted rapist and murderer on death row. She'll do anything-whatever it takes-to work on this case. Because Hannah has a secret. Nearly three decades ago her mother Laura abandoned everything, too. A teenage runaway who fled her abusive family, she escaped to Maine for a fresh start. Desperate for work and a place to sleep, Laura is forced to resort to favors from friends and strangers, until she meets a young man named, Tom, who becomes her guardian angel. As Hannah becomes more deeply involved with the Innocence Project she is forced to reckon with the thin lines between justice and revenge, privilege and complicity, love and abuse. And the more she learns about this complicated case, the more she learns about herself. Because secrets and lies come with a price.... Told in alternating timelines, the mother and daughter's stories twist and turn into an explosive conclusion"--