They Can't Take Your Name

October 1, 2021
The daughter of a convicted killer joins forces with the new owner of a historic Denver nightclub to clear her father's name. Langston Brown is on death row in Stratling Correctional Facility for the Mother's Day Massacre, a years-ago bank robbery that turned lethal. The evidence is overwhelming--except for the minor detail that Langston is Black and all the witnesses to the crime said the perp was White. Armed with that little-publicized discrepancy, Brown's daughter, Liza, leaves Juilliard and enrolls in law school with the goal of vindicating her father. Returning to Five Points, Denver's Black neighborhood, she's hired by Eli Stone on the spur of the moment to manage The Roz, the jazz club Eli bought and plans to reopen in hopes of recovering from the death of his beloved wife, Antoinette. The forces arrayed against the pair are formidable. Detective Sean Slager, the Black cop who made the case against Langston, is so determined to protect his community from what he sees as bad apples that he's willing to plant evidence against anyone he thinks guilty. The Colorado governor, learning that the state's store of the chemicals it uses in lethal injections is rapidly approaching its expiration date, announces that he's dramatically accelerating the schedule of executions to squeeze them all in under the deadline. The judge hearing Langston's appeal is manifestly unsympathetic, and a crucial piece of evidence has gone missing. All of this may sound familiar, but Justice, who's clearly more invested in his characters than his plot, and more invested in an anatomy of the racial injustices baked into the justice system than either, develops the ticking-clock story in ways that will surprise most readers. A soulful study of dreams deferred wrapped up, not always convincingly, in the trappings of a thriller.

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October 25, 2021
Justice debuts with a sensitive legal drama. Langston Brown, a Black man, has been on death row in Colorado for a decade for a fatal bank robbery he didn't commit. His daughter, Liza, a single mother in her final year of law school in Denver, dedicates herself to exonerating him. She convinces her school to launch an innocence project and focus on Langston's case. Meanwhile, she starts work at Eli Stone's newly renovated club in the predominantly Black Five Points neighborhood. Eli, mourning his wife's death, overheard the detective who arrested Langston confess to framing suspects years before, but has told no one. When the governor, who's up for reelection, announces that Langston will be executed in 30 days, Liza's team files one final motion, and Eli's attempts to bring the truth to light without exposing himself or admitting to Liza he's been keeping information from her has devastating consequences. The countdown to Langston's execution adds a propulsive tension, while the slowly growing tenderness between Eli and Liza balances out the grim story. This is a taut tale of perverted justice. Agent: Andrew D. Wolgemuth, Wolgemuth and Assoc.