Point of Order

In this explosive legal thriller, Judge David Norcross enters dangerous terrain when a favor to a colleague lands him a fifty-year-old homicide case.

The defendant, Dominic O’Connell—with the help of his gangster uncle—is one of Boston’s most charming and successful businessmen. His rise from poverty to power is the stuff of local legend. But when a dying hitman fingers O’Connell for the long-ago, unsolved murder of a city police officer, his life and his fortune are on the block. The prosecutor is seeking a life sentence, and Judge Norcross is the last person O’Connell wants on the bench.

With the trial days away, a deadly bombing in Harvard Yard throws the city into turmoil. The FBI believes that terrorists are behind the carnage, and their suspicions soon fix on a man tied to Norcross’s past. But was the bombing really a terrorist attack, a reprisal by O’Connell’s henchmen, or something else? As the threats to the judge and his family mount up, and the violence increases, lives will depend on getting answers to these questions—and getting them fast.

Drawing on decades of experience as a trial judge, New York Times–bestselling author Michael Ponsor crafts a gripping third Judge Norcross novel. The result is another page-turning mystery brimming with intrigue, fear, and courage, set in the real-life world of a federal court.

“The courtroom seen from the judge’s bench—a legal thriller both entertaining and morally nuanced, filled with telling insider details.” —Joseph Kanon

Praise for the Judge Norcross Novels

“A story that grips the reader even as it teaches some fine points of criminal procedure.” —The Washington Post on The Hanging Judge

“There are plenty of surprises to keep readers turning pages. Ponsor gives readers a unique look into the workings of a courtroom. . . . Ponsor’s debut would make a great movie.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on The Hanging Judge

“Ponsor brings his rare combination of experience on the bench and flair for storytelling to a timely topic.” —Joseph J. Ellis, National Book Award–winning author of The Quartet on The One-Eyed Judge

Michael Ponsor graduated from Harvard, received a Rhodes Scholarship, and studied for two years at Pembroke College, Oxford. After taking his law degree from Yale and clerking in federal court in Boston, he began his legal career, specializing in criminal defense. He moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1978, where he practiced as a trial attorney in his own firm until his appointment in 1984 as a US magistrate judge in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed him a life-tenured US district judge. From 2000 to 2001, he presided over a five-month death penalty trial, the first in Massachusetts in over fifty years. Judge Ponsor continues to serve as a senior US district judge in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Western Division, with responsibility for federal criminal and civil cases in the four counties of western Massachusetts. The Hanging Judge is his first novel.