UNDER DURESS

What can a father do when strangers threaten his children-and the law says fear may explain a killing? In this Pittsburgh legal thriller, defense attorney Teddy Vance takes the case of Tony Rusnak, a courier who admits striking a man dead with a hammer.

Tony says he was coerced. For six weeks, messages warned him that his children were being watched. He believed that if he went to the police, his son would be taken. Now he faces a murder trial for killing Gerald Maddox, a retired city worker who had opened his door expecting a delivery.

Assistant District Attorney Rafael Quill sees a staged story: a hidden envelope of cash, a hammer from Tony's own toolbox, and a sentence repeated as if rehearsed. Teddy must persuade a jury that the law of duress turns on what a person of reasonable firmness could resist-not on whether the threat was sincere.

The evidence raises a harder question. Who sent the messages, placed a stranger near Tony's daughter's school, and steered a courier toward Maddox's home? Teddy has seen a case like this before, and the pattern is difficult to ignore.

As the trial tests the boundary between coercion and choice, every witness brings Teddy closer to a truth she may not want. A verdict can decide Tony's fate. It may not explain why Gerald Maddox died.

Under Duress is Book 2 in The Affirmative Defense, a courtroom thriller series set in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.