JUSTICE DEFERRED

Revenge becomes a dish best served with plenty of legal scheming in Williams's fast-paced debut novel, as an escaped ex-con goes to amazing lengths to nail the two cops who use Alabama's third-strike rule to engineer an unjust life sentence. Billy Ray Billings is a Mobile native with a rough family background who drifts into a life of petty crime. His initial success leads to a brief period on easy street, but a short prison stint serves as a temporary deterrent. Then he gets back in with the wrong crowd, and when the police bust him again and fraudulently tack on another charge after the arrest, he finds himself facing life in prison. Billy Ray is rescued in prison by an inmate named Leonard who steers him into a clandestine education program, and as he builds his academic résumé, the ambitious Billy Ray uses the prison chaplain to engineer an unlikely escape. He moves to Jackson, Miss., and becomes Harry Brown, going to work for a dry cleaner and then earning a law degree while writing court-oriented profiles for the local paper. Life seems complete and satisfying when he starts a relationship with a local woman, but he can't resist the opportunity to seek out an old crooked colleague and devise an incredibly complex, clever plan to take down the two cops who framed him. Williams gets bogged down a bit in the details of the trial that follows, and his prose can be sloppy, but the combination of dialogue-driven scenes and surprising plot twists is downright addictive. It's rare for a first-time author to master two genres, but this novel works as both prison fiction and legal thriller. (Nov.)

Forecast:Williams, a former CEO, was inspired to write this novel by events following the disappearance of his 16-year-old son in 1980. Readers will hope this isn't a one-shot effort, because the author has what it takes to make a success of his second career. 25-city author tour.