The racketeer of the title is Malcolm Bannister, a 43-year-old disbarred black lawyer who is halfway through a 10-year prison sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. A small-time, small-town attorney from Winchester, Va., Malcolm had agreed, as a favor to a “law school pal,” to handle a seemingly straightforward legal matter for a client Malcolm had never met. When the client turned out to be dirty, the Feds nailed everyone in the chain, regardless of culpability.

Up to this point, Malcolm Bannister had been a model citizen. A former Marine, he had made his parents — his late mother and his Virginia state- trooper father — proud. He’d also made himself and his wife, a lovely woman who’d given him a lovely son, proud. But, as a result of the government’s mendacity, when we meet Malcolm he’s lost his now ex-wife, the 11-year-old son he adores, the respect of his father (a rigid man from the where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire school) and his profession. In other words, Malcolm has lost his life. Not surprisingly, he is one bitter man.

Then fortune finally smiles on. A federal judge in Roanoke, Va., is found murdered in his vacation cabin, along with an unclothed young woman not his wife and a good-sized, very empty safe.

Malcolm did not know the judge, nor had he ever appeared before him, but he does know who killed him. This, Malcolm instantly realizes, is his ticket to freedom. It is called Rule 35 (of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure) which, according to Malcolm and in fact, ” provides the only mechanism for the commutation of a prison sentence. Its logic is brilliant and fits my situation perfectly. If an inmate can solve another crime, then the inmate’s sentence can be reduced.”