THE WRONG SIDE

African American lawyer Bocephus Haynes accepts a second case guaranteed to set him against pretty much everybody of all races in Giles County, Tennessee.

Minutes after her last tender moments with star high school running back Odell Champagne, Brittany Crutcher, the lead singer for the rising teen band Fizz, leaves a note in his locker telling him she’s leaving the next morning for LA after signing a solo contract that will leave Fizz out in the cold along with Odell. When he sees the note, Odell, having just dominated the intervening football game and heard Fizz crush the halftime show, is enraged, so when a sanitation worker finds Brittany dead in the back of a school bus the next morning, her head smashed in by a beer bottle, it's no surprise that Odell’s prints are all over it or that Chief Deputy Sheriff Frannie Storm arrests Odell for murder. Facing certain conviction, Odell begs Bo Haynes, whom he’s idolized ever since Bo’s own football days at Giles County High, to defend him. Bo takes his sweet time before committing himself, realizing that although both the victim and the defendant are Black, there are difficult racial currents at work. Also, taking the case will antagonize everyone from District Attorney General Helen Lewis to Israel Crutcher, Brittany’s father, who vows violent revenge against anyone who sides with Odell. And there turns out to be good reason for his hesitation, for his own search for an alternative suspect in Michael Zannick, the White manager who landed Brittany’s contract in return for the usual personal accommodations, is torpedoed when Zannick produces an alibi from a wholly unexpected source.

Social tensions redoubled by race intensify a workmanlike mystery.