Presumed Guilty

September 5, 2022
Criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Shapiro makes her debut with a thought-provoking legal thriller. In 2012, Emma Simpson is juggling her responsibilities as a wife and mother with her high-pressure job on Wall Street as the manager of the New York office of a hedge fund. That work-life balance becomes more difficult after she is targeted by the ambitious and publicity-hungry U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Peter Weisman. Weisman’s investigative team believes, based on little evidence, that Simpson profited from insider trading to the tune of millions of dollars and orchestrated her staff’s destruction of relevant records after learning of a subpoena. The feds pursue a multiyear inquiry, ultimately charging her with obstruction of justice and witness tampering. Despite no proof that Simpson had the requisite corrupt intent to sustain the charges, the prosecutors push ahead, setting up a dramatic trial. Shapiro endows all her characters with depth in the service of an all too plausible plot, and her courtroom scenes perfectly capture the thrust-and-parry exchanges of opposing counsel. Scott Turow fans will hope for more from Shapiro.

June 1, 2022
In this debut legal novel, an innocent Wall Street executive becomes the subject of a misguided criminal investigation. New York, 2012. Emma Simpson, the manager of the Manhattan office of the hedge fund Otis Capital, dashes off an email before leaving work for the day. It's a routine missive, encouraging the members of her team to follow the company's document retention policy. Then she drives home to her husband and two children on their Hudson Valley farm. One year later, Otis Capital is the target of an insider trading investigation conducted by the United States Attorney's office, and Emma--without realizing it--has become its primary person of interest. Word comes down that she needs to lawyer up. "Did she really need her own big-shot defense lawyer?" wonders Emma. "The company already had a very expensive law firm with a bunch of former federal prosecutors handling the subpoena. Was there something they weren't telling her?" And after all, she didn't do anything wrong. Regardless, Emma finds herself in the sights of two ambitious federal prosecutors--one on the fast track to a prominent career and one afraid that he isn't--and it might not matter who, if anyone, is actually guilty. The wheels of justice are in motion, and Emma is trapped directly in their path. Shapiro's prose is clean and fluid, capturing the intricacies of finance law and the emotional states of her characters with equal clarity: "Emma stared at the empty yellow pad in front of her and tapped her pencil on it repeatedly. She felt numb and disconnected from her surroundings. It was as if she had just discovered she'd been living in a simulation for the past forty-five years with no ability to control a destiny that was simply the product of algorithms in someone else's computer program." The author demonstrates a convincing familiarity with Wall Street and financial prosecution, and the characters, even the minor ones, are memorably constructed. Emma has frustratingly little control over her own story, which robs the book of some of its potential dynamism but illustrates for readers how powerless an innocent person often is before the law. A terrifyingly detailed, engrossing tale about what happens when the judicial hammer comes down.

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