Fast-moving, gripping novel based on the trial of Saddam Hussein.
At the end of 2005, as the war in Iraq goes from bad to worse, the trial of Saddam Hussein with its foregone conclusion flies largely under the radar of international scrutiny. When thirty-six-year-old public defender Malcolm X Heinlein is asked to travel to Iraq to represent a little-known co-defendant at the trial, he understands he is being chosen because of his strange pedigree and, possibly, his conspiratorial history with Ayesha Qaddafi, trial counsel for Saddam and the thirty-year-old daughter of Muammar Qaddafi. Malcolm and his friend and mentor Sophia soon learn that their client, Mohamed Jabbouri, is a former Saddam body double who wants desperately to testify against Saddam in exchange for freedom for himself and his family in America. At first, arranging Jabbouri s deal seems almost too easy. But the murder of Malcolm s Iraqi co-counsel on Baghdad s streets, the near murder of Sophia, and shadowy threats from an unknown source prove that Jabbouri s life, and Malcolm s, are far from secure. Malcolm realizes that his mission requires him to confront the very heart of the hypocrisy of the Hussein trial Chief Investigating Judge Ra id al-Juhi. Al-Juhi presents as a perfectly self-interested Iraqi ladder climber, but Malcolm learns that his motives are more complex than the Americans or Ayesha could ever have imagined. Malcolm also asks himself a key question which everyone else seems to be ignoring why would the Americans want Saddam dead? With help from Ayesha, an alcoholic British reporter, and Saddam himself, Malcolm slowly begins to take in the full conspiracy underlying the trial, and chooses to risk everything to save his client s life. In a dramatic endgame culminating with the famous cell phone video of Saddam s execution, Malcolm learns that Ayesha Qaddafi s cryptic warning could not have been more accurate Nothing is what it seems in the matter of Saddam Hussein.
