Conpiracy of Silence

When the lovely young Lizbeth Crawford walks into Joe Scintilla's office in late 1936, she tells him a curious story: she is convinced that her father, the wealthy industrialist James Allen Crawford, did not kill his brother Frank, even though Crawford confessed to the murder and is determined to serve out his sentence in Rahway State Prison. Is Crawford shielding someone? Why are both his mother and his wife happy to have him locked up in prison? And why did Frank's fiancée, Eva Dailey, commit suicide shortly after his death?

The case leads Scintilla to probe the baffling dynamics of the Crawford family of Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, and to investigate not only the circumstances of a decade-old murder, but also the mind of its self-confessed perpetrator—a man who feels honor-bound to rot in prison for a murder he may not have committed.