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Critical Death Theory: first draft, 5,400 words

Part 3 first! Before we get to our adventures in the Shetlands, I have a book announcement. We have signed a contract for the sequel to A Quiet Teacher. I knew it was coming but it’s still a thrill to ink the deal. I’ve promised to deliver the manuscript by February of next year, so I’m assuming it will come out a few months after that. Of course, it’s July now so, in writing time, February is not so far away and I have only just started writing the story (I feel my agent, the estimable Brady, clutching his heart as he reads this). Fear not! As the story has been outlined to the nth degree, all I have to do is get it on the page. The hard part (plotting, clues, character development, etc.) has already been mapped out. All that remains is the fun bit: actual writing! Barring some massive geopolitical upheaval that screws around with my day job, I’m expecting pretty smooth sailing from here on in. Hopefully!

I have learned over time that my willingness to spend many, many weeks coming up with an outline identifies me as a particular “type.” In terms of how we go about putting words on a page, writers, I’ve discovered, are fond of dividing themselves into two camps: plotters and pantsers. Pantsers, according to this theory, write by the seat of their pants, throwing down words to see where it takes them, while plotters outline everything ahead of time, plotting each and every step from A to Z before writing a single word of manuscript. While most writers I’ve met so far identify as pantsers, I am very much at the opposite end of the spectrum. I like outlines. I like to know where I’m going. The thing I hate most about writing is “wasting” days of writing time wrestling with a plot problem I should have thought about earlier. When I’m writing I like to write!

Even by my standards, though, the outline for the AQT sequel is obsessive. It’s the most detailed outline I’ve ever written. There are two reasons for that. First, as this is a whodunnit, the clues have to fit exactly. I don’t have anywhere near as much room to maneuver as I would in a sci-fi novel. In a whodunnit, you can’t fly too far from your clues. Second, the outline is more detailed than for AQT because in this one there are not one but two murders. Double the clue plotting!

Now, having said all that, I don’t really buy into the plotters versus pantsers thing. Both are really doing the same thing, just framing it differently. A pantser’s first draft is basically just a very long outline: it bears little relationship to the final product. There are massive and multiple rewrites before the author is ready to show the fruits of their labors. An outline, conversely, is just a very short first draft. There’s a huge amount of writing still to be done before the completed manuscript is ready for the light of day. Either way, you end up with a book. And in reality, all writers plot and write by the seat of their pants. Otherwise, their books would either make no sense or lack any sense of inspiration. My personal view is that it comes down to how lazy you are. I am very lazy. The thought of writing tens of thousands of words just to get at the outline of a story brings me out in hives. The physical effort outweighs the joy of the writing. If you’re not lazy, on the other hand, why would you deprive yourself of a writing adventure just to save yourself a few keystrokes? Forget plotters and pantsers. You’re either lazy, or you’re not.

Back to the AQT sequel. I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a while. I’m going to share the title! Critical Death Theory. As regular readers of this blog will know, no one, and I mean no one, likes my titles. They always get changed, the new titles are always better, and so I generally don’t feel the need to embarrass myself further by exposing the original moniker to public ridicule. This time, though, when I suggested it, neither the redoubtable Brady, nor his assistant James, nor Editor Rachel at Severn House shot it down. Who knows? It might even make it to publication.

As for E________, I’m still waiting for the axe to fall on that one. Or is it going to be two in a row?

Illness, work, and a compulsive desire to vent about AI have prevented me from bringing you up to speed about my June of festivals: Cymera and Shetland Noir. This week: Cymera.

Last year, as you may recall, I attended Cymera ’22 as an author panelist. It was my first time ever at a book festival and I was simply blown away. This time, now that I’ve moved to Edinburgh where Cymera is held, I managed to wangle a gig as a panel moderator. Arriving in the green room 30 minutes before our panel, Connection, Interrupted, with Nina Allan, Cory Doctorow, and Ian McDonald, Cory confronted me with the blunt question: “What’s this panel about?” Fortunately, having had to wrestle with the same problem for some weeks as I read through their excellent books, I had an answer.

We trooped out onto what I like to think of as the Cymera main stage and launched into a wide-ranging discussion about AI, use and abuse of the internet, privacy, technological fixes for global warming, and the merits of a good old-fashioned handshake deal, as seen through the lens of their novels Conquest, Red Team Blues, and Hopeland. I thought it was going great guns – and it was – until Cory directed my attention to frantic waving offstage. I had run out of time and left no opportunity for audience questions. I can’t read a watch, apparently. Fortunately, I am a person of color. Had I been white, I would have been beetroot with embarrassment!

Cymera itself didn’t disappoint. The Blackwells on site bookshop was as awesome as I remembered it, everyone was happy and a lot of us were well lubricated. Shockingly, given that Cymera takes place in what passes for Edinburgh University’s Student Union, they ran out of beer! There were a couple of the highlights I particularly want to mention. First, a book signing with Samantha Shannon. I’m not a huge fantasy reader these days but I loved The Priory of the Orange Tree, which contains one of the best opening sentences of all time. The queue went out the door and well up the stairway but she was as gracious with the last person in line as she was with the first. Second, an all female panel called Final Frontiers with Stark Holborn, Everina Maxwell, and Emily Tesh. The discussion of their space operas Hel’s Eight, Ocean’s Echo, and Some Desperate Glory, was witty, ribald and perceptive by turns. So much so that, even though I was not familiar with any of them, I marched over to the bookstore, bought three of their books, and then waited patiently to get them signed. They were every bit as delightful face to face as they were on stage. As I get to them on my TBR list, I’ll drop you all a short review. But in the meantime, please take a look at Everina Maxwell’s signature. I watched her write it out freehand, in real time. I’ve never been proud of my penmanship. Now, I’m just humiliated.

Listening to the news right now, the end of the world is come at last. Not because of climate change, or incurable pandemics, or an enraged President Putin pressing the button.  This is something completely different.  Humanity will wink out of existence because of a word processor on steroids. ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence program that can be pre-trained to generate conversational responses, emails, essays and the like, is our harbinger of doom.

Even the straitlaced end of the media spectrum is full of stories and opinion pieces claiming that ChatGPT means we are heartbeats away from the point where AI will develop its own plans and goals without input from humans.  From there, according to the normally sober Johnathan Freedland in the Guardian, ’tis but a short step to a scenario whereby “an AI bent on a goal to which the existence of humans had become an obstacle, or even an inconvenience, could set out to kill all by itself.”  Humans will be wiped from the face of the Earth.  AI will rule all.

To which I say: relax.  Read some science fiction.

First, let’s remember that software programs do not have hands. Trite as that may sound, a genius AI bent on the destruction of humanity can’t do much on its own. It could spread a ton of disinformation (something we’ve become very good at doing on our own, thank you very much) but it would still need a human being to turn the launch keys of a nuclear missile. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always found the Terminator movies fun but not frightening. Skynet could always have been stymied. Even assuming a real-world Skynet had access to the various killing machines in the movies, communications could be cut off, instructions corrupted.  An individual terminator, like any drone, could be isolated, reprogrammed, or otherwise rendered harmless. Better yet, just pull the plug the moment Skynet acts up.  The movies magically made that impossible, but in the real world?  C’mon.  For mechanisms powered by electricity it’s not that hard.

Second, science fiction and science fiction writers have been living with AI for over a hundred years.  We know a thing or two.  Rossum’s Universal Robots, the Czech play that actually invented the word robot, was first performed in 1920.  Isaac Asimov’s various robot stories date from the 1940s (for non-SF readers, Asimov’s I, Robot is as good a place to start your literary journey as any), and Iain M. Banks’s Culture series, where machine intelligences run the galaxy and humans mostly kick back and have fun, ran from 1987 (Consider Phlebas) to 2012 (The Hydrogen Sonata). What a century of science fiction teaches us is that humans can live with artificial intelligence pretty easily. AI can be a tool, or a partner, or an independent entity that frees us up for other things.  It is not an unavoidable omen of our own destruction: at least no more than nuclear weapons, or global warming, or a shocking complacency about natural-born pathogens. Humans adapt. It’s what we do.

That said, we do have to get from the panicky present to the cool SF future. Real artificial intelligence will arrive at some point and the non-SF community needs to get comfortable with that.

Asimov’s solution to the threat of AI was his famous Three Laws of Robotics: (1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.  In Asimov’s universe, these parameters are built into the robot’s positronic brain. In the real world, too, laws and regulations will be a good part of the answer. When cars, slow and clumsy as they were, first rolled on to our roads, laws were passed forbidding them from travelling faster than walking pace. In fact, they had to be preceded by an actual human being walking along the highway with a red flag. Absurd now, but necessary then to calm the public panic brought about by world-changing technology.

AI must also have its own “red flag” laws. Maybe computing power is limited, or kill switches are built in, or access to the outside world is somehow curtailed. Probably all of this and more. Humans are actually pretty good at the laws and regulations stuff. We just need to calm down and get on with it. AI has already given us brand new antibiotics and new treatments for brain tumors. Let’s put in some guard rails and allow AI to change the world for the better. Cool stuff is coming!

Now that we’ve taken a beat, consider this: it may not be coincidental that all these end-of-the-world news stories focus on software that generates words.  Perhaps the fear behind the headlines lies in the fact that next year’s news could be written by AI instead of a hard-bitten journalist.   I say nothing about whether that is a good or bad thing, but a sensible early law might be one that forbids AI-generated content from passing itself off as human.

After all, do you really know who wrote this?

Very excited to see the above pic, which comes from Hideo Kojima’s English language Twitter account. Hideo Kojima, for those of you who don’t know, is a video gaming legend, responsible, among other things, for the Metal Gear series of video games and, more recently, Death Stranding. To have him read a pre-publication version of the Japanese release and then talk about it on Twitter is an honor beyond words.

Also, loving the artwork! The depiction of the Archimedes on its long climb toward Tau Ceti is very close to the descriptions found in the actual book. Can’t wait to receive my own copy. Clearly, the artist has read the thing from cover to cover. In Japanese, I imagine. Apart from my name and the title, I have no idea what any of it says!

It is Edinburgh and it is raining. But in a few short weeks it will be June and one can hope for a bit of sun and temperatures somewhere above 15C/60F. After 23 years in the States, I’m pretty sure I will still be wearing an overcoat.

June also means book festivals, and I am lucky enough to be going to two of them. Although they could not be more different: in keeping with my split literary persona.

First, running from June 2-4, is the Cymera Book Festival, an amazing celebration of all things to do with SF, Fantasy, and Horror. Regular readers of this blog will know that I was lucky enough to take the stage there last year on a panel about space-based SF called Ad Astra, with fellow authors Ken MacLeod and Harry Josephine Giles. The panel was a blast but the festival itself was an eye opener. I’d never been to a book festival before. Wandering around shoulder to shoulder with SFFH authors and readers was an inspiration. Surrounded by so many people who take such unadulterated joy in reading and writing books was a real lift to the spirits. So much so that I vowed I would come back as a volunteer, even if it was only to stamp tickets.

Well, lo and behold, here I am! Ann Landmann, the force of nature behind Cymera (thank you, Ann, for everything that you do!), has been kind enough to allow me to chair one of the SF panels, Connection, Interrupted, with Nina Allan, Cory Doctorow and Ian McDonald. We will be discussing their respective new creations, Conquest, Red Team Blues, and Hopeland, in the context (both good and bad) of near-future tech. I am sooooo looking forward to it!

After that, it will be time to put my crime writer hat on and head to Shetland Noir, which takes place in Lerwick, Shetland from 16-18 June. Shetland is one of the archipelagoes that comprise Scotland’s Northern Isles, though they are remote from Scotland itself, being significantly closer to Norway. I am very much a small fish in the big, crime-writing ocean but I am very much looking forward to my panel: Crime on Distant Shores with Wendy Jones Nakanishi/Lea O’Harra and Alasdair “AJ” Liddle. This being my first crime writing festival, I have absolutely no idea what I’m in for. Except for one thing.

It’s guaranteed to be an adventure.

The writing life is full of small setbacks. I am typing this post from a coffee shop on the Lothian Road, Edinburgh. But not my usual coffee shop on the Lothian Road, Edinburgh. As I am, in many ways, a creature of habit, this counts as a minor catastrophe.

As I do not have the luxury of writing full time (why did autofill suggest “full sentences?” Does it think I’m illiterate?”), I am in the habit of wandering down to my local coffee shop around seven a.m. and writing for an hour or two before heading off to the day job. Today, however, when I reached my destination, I was horrified to discover that the shop had moved to “temporary” hours commencing at . . . eight.

Like I said, a catastrophe. I ended up trogging along to another more crowded, less laptop friendly location and setting up shop there. But time has been lost! Productivity has dropped! Targets (albeit self-imposed) will be missed! It’s quite unsettling for a delicate artistic type like yours truly. Or an old, overly rigid curmudgeon. Take your pick.

Of course, depending on your perspective, not all waits are a bad thing. I was talking to my good friend, Shelly G., the other day, and she was telling me that she had recommended Braking Day to one of her colleagues. A day or two later, he announced that it would be a little while before he could read it as it was signed out at his local library and there was, wait for it . . .

A waiting list.

Who’d a thunk it?

While a wait is obviously not ideal for my friend’s colleague, I find it immensely flattering that anyone would be motivated enough to get on a waiting list for one of my books. I am keeping my fingers crossed that, after they’ve read it, they still feel it was worth the wait.

It’s come as a bit of a shock to realize that it’s been a month since I last posted anything. I kept putting it off in favor of doing something else writing related and, well, here we are. Sorry!

Writing wise, it seems like everything’s been happening everywhere all at once. (Yes, I went to see the movie. No, I couldn’t stop myself from mucking around with the title.) In no particular order, the following has floated in and out of my literary life.

First, Nigeria. Although I am Scottish by birth and American by choice, I am (in part) Nigerian by descent. So I was delighted beyond the telling to learn that A Quiet Teacher has been picked up by Masobe Books, a Nigerian publisher. “Masobe,” by the way, means “let us read” in Isoko, which is spoken in the Delta region of Nigeria. I can’t think of a better name for a publisher! It will be on sale soon and I think the cover treatment is incredible. Conceptually similar to the original but with a decidedly Nigerian vibe. My only regret is that my old man is not around to see it. It would have tickled him pink. Or maybe green, white, and green. 🇳🇬

Second, and sticking with A Quiet Teacher, Severn House, the publisher, have approached me about writing a sequel. Needless to say, I am super excited about the opportunity. First, it means I now have a shot at publishing a third book, so I can keep this writer lark going a bit longer. Second, I would really like to see where my main character’s journey takes him.

The catch, though, if that’s the right word, is that SH wanted a synopsis. I’ve never written a synopsis prior to writing the actual book, so that was an adventure in and of itself. It’s a lot more work! Instead of writing a high-level summary of a story I’d already written, I had to plan the book first and write a summary of that instead. No basic outline of the story, no synopsis. Which, I guess, is the point. SH know fine well that, having done all that prep work up front, I’m going to write the thing! So, I’m pushing on and finalizing the outline in the hope that SH find the synopsis acceptable. Which brings us to my usual problem: the title. This time, I don’t even have an idea for one. My agent, the estimable Brady, has suggested 2 Quiet 2 Teacher. He is not, perhaps, being entirely serious.

Third, and last, and by no means least, I have finished the manuscript of E________! “Finished,” as I have noted before, is kind of relative. What I mean this time is this: having written a first draft followed by two go-overs, the third iteration of E_________ was in good enough shape to send to the estimable Brady and his assistant, James, for comment. Of course, the moment I pressed “send,” I started torturing myself. Maybe I’d sent it off too soon. Maybe, even now, Brady and James were reading a steaming pile of garbage. Ugh! But last Friday they called to say they’d read the manuscript and that it was not at all bad. According to Brady, I have written a pacy SF thriller in the same vein as Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter or Recursion, which, if even half true, is high praise indeed!

Even better from my perspective, neither Brady nor James had any big edits, just some really good suggestions for polishing it up: something I can get done in a week or two. Which leaves me in a truly unusual position. For the first time in maybe a year, I have time on my hands. 2 Quiet 2 Teacher here we come!

E_______ second draft, 97.0% complete.

Thanks to my fabulous colleague, Denitsa R., I was able for the first time in years to take a weeklong break from my day job totally uninterrupted by work. Pure bliss!

And how did I spend all this free time? Well, working of course.

I’m joking. Sort of. I attended a writing retreat at Moniack Mhor, “Scotland’s National Writing Centre.” Situated in the Scottish Highlands (not high by Denver standards but high enough), it’s a large farmhouse, adjacent cottage, and study/studio where writers of all levels and persuasions can get together to do nothing but eat, drink, write, and chat. Not necessarily in that order. They have an incredible staff whose job is to make sure nothing gets between you and whatever you want to do (literarily speaking) while you’re there. Your only obligation is to help prepare one of the communal evening meals. Even though I can burn water when left to my own devices, the kitchen turned out to be an absolute blast.

With thick walls and warm fireplaces to keep us snug against the winds howling through the mountains, I had an opportunity to mix with memoirists, PhD. candidates, poets, graphic novelists, writers of non-fiction and more. It was the best time I’ve had in ages. And did I say that the staff were amazing? (No, I didn’t. I said they were incredible. They were also amazing.) On the last night we had a super-Scottish evening with a piped-in and traditionally addressed haggis followed by people reading extracts from things they’d been working on. It was brilliant and funny and moving and harrowing by turns: not something I’m likely to forget anytime soon.

For me, it was also an opportunity to get a sense of what it might be like to be a full-time writer. It appears that, if given the opportunity, “full-time” writing would consist of getting to my desk around 10 a.m., working for a couple of hours, having a nap, followed by lunch, followed by another couple of hours of work, followed by another nap, followed by more food and/or the pub. Nice work if you can get it, right? Though, to be fair, four hours of writing a day is at least twice what I manage at the moment! We shall see. I am a very long way from being able to give up my day job. And that’s assuming I would even want to do such a thing.

Despite the frequent napping, my week at Moniack Mhor was incredibly productive. Thanks to the stuff I was able to get done up there, I’m only a day or two from finishing my second draft. After that, all that remains is to give it a final read through, make a few last-minute tweaks, and pack it off to the estimable Brady.

And then I can knuckle down to writing the sequel to A Quiet Teacher. I have the beginnings of an outline and synopsis: I just need to knit a bunch of interesting but random thoughts into something a little more coherent, after which: away we go!

You know, if I wasn’t having so much fun, this would feel like a job . . .

E________, second draft: 54.5% complete.

Human beings, I sometimes think, are time machines, programmed to travel into the future. And one of the joys about traveling into the future is that you get to see how things turn out. Things that used to be science fiction (cellphones, orbiting space stations, flying cars (nearly there!)) become a part of everyday life. And if, like me, you write hard(ish) science fiction, you like to think that some of what you put down on the page will come true one day. Excepting, of course, the galaxy-spanning wars, pogroms and massacres. I’m talking about the cool stuff.

Which is why, one day, I would like to be able to write a story about a coal mine.

Wait. What?

Coal mines, despite being pressed into service by Suzanne Collins in her Hunger Games trilogy, are very much associated with the past. No one, not even those in countries like China or Poland that still rely on coal for their energy, see much of a future for them. I, on the other hand, am beginning to think they could have a really important – and really green – part to play in a grid powered by renewables.

I’m thinking wheels.

With the exception of solar panels, electricity is basically generated by spinning wheels. Admittedly, the wheels are hooked up with magnets and conductors, but if the wheels don’t spin the magnets and conductors don’t work and you don’t get electricity. Coal, and gas, and nuclear powerplants all generate heat that turns water into steam that is then used to turn turbines (a fancy word for wheels) and generate electricity. They’re essentially steam engines. Dams and wind turbines (there’s that word again) do it more directly, using water and air to set the relevant wheels (okay, turbines) to spinning. The bigger and the heavier the wh . . . sorry, turbine, the more electricity you can generate.

Which brings us to coal mines. More precisely, the shafts of coal mines. Some of these are very deep. The deepest in Europe, possibly the world, is in the war-torn Donbas region of Ukraine. Shakhterskaya mine is 1,546 meters (5,072 feet) deep. Think about that. You could drop the Empire State building (1,454 feet) down there plus another two of them and still need to take a serious elevator ride down to the topmost spire of the third one.

And it’s elevators, actually, that are the key to this. An elevator (or lift as I should say now that I’m back in Scotland) is something raised up and down a shaft on a pulley mechanism. And a pulley is basically a wheel. When it turns it can generate electricity.

So, here’s the deal. When the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, use any excess electricity you produce to lift heavy weights (I’m thinking elevators full of sand and rejected manuscripts) from the bottom of a mine shaft, the deeper the better. Then, when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, let the weights drop. They would drop slowly because they’d be turning a gigantic pulley that we’d be using to generate electricity on the way down. And it’s a long way down! Scientists estimate that building “gravity batteries” like this has an energy storage potential of up to 70 Terawatt hours. That’s a lot of watts, by the way – about as much as the entire world consumes in a day – completely rechargeable and with no meaningful emissions or dangerous chemicals. Plus, think of all the old mining communities that could be reinvigorated by the investment and jobs. It’s a win win win win win!

Of course, in my novel, the gravity battery will be the site of a grisly crushing death, or maybe the target of terrorists trying to blow up the grid. Not cool! Let’s try and keep those bits confined to the page.

E________, second draft: 33.9% complete

Off-the-wall things start happening once you get published (as if getting published wasn’t off the wall enough). Not so long ago, the folks at booksite sheperd.com stumbled across yours truly wearing his crime writer hat. For reasons best known to themselves, they asked me to share with them my five favorite fair-play murder mysteries. And, with their permission, I can now share them with you. Enjoy!

And Then There Were None

By Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None is arguably (!) the best of Christie’s mysteries and the best introduction to her work anyone could hope for. Ten strangers, all with a wide variety of occupations and backgrounds, accept invitations from a mysterious host to spend a weekend on an isolated island. The strangers, though, have one thing in common: they have escaped justice for dark deeds done in the past. As the weekend progresses to its seemingly inevitable conclusion, the weekend visitors begin to die one by one. Whatever the sins of the past, one of them is a killer.  The ever-dwindling band of survivors have no choice but to solve the mystery or die trying.

Moonflower Murders

By Anthony Horowitz

Moonflower Murders shows what can be done at the boundary between genre and literary fiction. This is a writer at the top of his form with twisty plotting, mellifluous prose, and the sheer joy of storytelling. Realistic? No. But that’s not the point. This is an insane murder mystery within a murder mystery. A sequel to Magpie Murders, it features retired publisher Susan Ryeland, who now runs a small hotel on a Greek island. But running a small hotel on a Greek island isn’t for everyone, and Susan is beginning to miss her old life in London.

She is pushed into returning when two of her guests inform her that their newlywed daughter had been in dangerous proximity to a murder back home and had now gone missing – hours after reading a murder mystery Susan herself had edited in her old life. The book holds the key to both the murder and the daughter’s disappearance. Susan is determined to get to the bottom of them. Even if it kills her.

The Cuckoo’s Calling

By Robert Galbraith

A reworking of the hard-boiled crime novel, updated with a modern-day female partner and a not-quite romance, there is a lot to like in the first and, I think, shortest of Robert Galbraith’s/J.K. Rowling’s mystery series. Private investigator Cormoran Strike is down on his luck. He is deep in debt, sleeping in his office, and utterly unable to pay for Robin Ellacott, the agency temp he forgot to cancel. Things take a turn for the better, though, when a high-strung model falls to her death from an upscale London balcony. Everyone says it’s suicide, except her brother, who turns to Cormoran for help. Reluctantly taking Robin in tow, Cormoran finds there’s far more to the apparent suicide than meets the eye. But while delving ever deeper is good for Cormoran’s bank balance, it is decidedly the reverse when it comes to his odds of survival.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

By Stuart Turton

Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day meets Rashomon in this country house murder mystery where the narrator is as much a puzzle as the murder itself. The narrator lurches into the novel as a witness to a killing so dreadful they’ve lost their memory. Then awakes the next morning to live the same day again as a different character with a different viewpoint: a bizarre twist that repeats itself until we have, as the title suggests, seven different versions of what happened, and enough information, finally, to get to the “truth.” Come for the strange, mind-bending trip, leave with a beautifully constructed conclusion.

The Trespasser

By Tana French

Cynical, elegantly plotted, and beautifully written, in this, the sixth of French’s Dublin Murder Squad mysteries, a young woman is found dead in her home and the initial conclusion is that she’s a victim of domestic violence. Her boyfriend is hauled in and questioned and the Squad is convinced it’s an open and shut case. All except the deeply unpopular Antoinette Conway, who spots a number of inconsistencies that give her pause. Pushed to the limit by the hostility and harassment of her so-called colleagues, Conway probes deeper into the case—at the risk of sinking her precarious career for good.