GRAVE DANGER

No sooner has he promised to cut back dramatically on the criminal defense cases that have made his reputation and poisoned his marriage to FBI undercover agent Andie Henning than Jack Swyteck accepts a custody case whose stakes are even higher.

Farid Bazzi, a partner in six hotels in Iran, contends that his wife, Ava Bazzi, broke out of a Tehran prison after her arrest by the morality police, grabbed their 6-year-old daughter, Yasmin, and fled to Miami. The revelation that the client determined to keep Yasmin is actually Farid’s second wife, Ava’s sister Zahra, uncovers the first of many lies by every party, which Jack will have to wade through in representing her. The custody hearing, which ought to be routine, is introduced by a violent threat against Jack—“If you make this case about what happened to Ava, someone is going to get hurt”—and highlighted by Tehran banker Nouri Asmoun’s virtual testimony that he was Ava’s lover, Zahra and Farid’s dueling claims over whether Ava is dead or alive, and mounting pressure from shadowy U.S. government representatives on both Jack and Andie to avoid pursuing any inquiries about Ava in order to protect their government’s negotiations over the release of antiquities broker Brian Guthrie. Hours after a surprising development delivers a victory for Jack and his client, another equally unexpected development plunges them into a new round of woes. As he tightens the screws on Jack and Andie, Grippando uses every possible legal device and convention to turn questions about the Iranian government’s treatment of women into agonizingly personal tragedies.

A dizzying series of textbook lessons in how aggrieved litigants weaponize legal procedures, and vice versa.