The Court of Impostors

In courts of the old west, truth was determined by juries of simple folks, based on testimony of biased witnesses and manipulated by opportunistic lawyers. This is to say nothing of bribes, corruption and intimidation. Into this world rode an untried circuit judge, Dan Logan, caught up in a complex land swindle in northern Colorado in 1885. But this judge was an impostor. Sean Stewart was once an honest mounted policeman in 1883 New York City who turned vigilante when his family was butchered in retaliation for Sean’s defiance of a corrupt judge. Desperate to escape his demons, Sean headed west, where he chanced upon Dan Logan, a professor newly appointed as a circuit riding judge. On the train ride west, they quickly became friends over a spirited debate between lofty legal theory and harsh practice reality. Nearly killed in an ambush, the tenderfoot judge confesses his role in the swindle to Sean, but claiming his daughter is held hostage. Judge Logan begs Sean to take his place and finish the scheme to save the judge’s daughter. For Sean, the temptation to foil the con from within and save the judge’s daughter was too great to resist. The swindlers, led by the elusive scoundrel Artemis Fry, thought they murdered Miranda Ramirez and her husband for the land, but Miranda survived. She was accustomed to being underestimated, given her beauty, her operatic singing voice and being one of the rare women lawyers of her time. To catch the killers, she journeys west and encounters an eclectic mix of circuit riding lawyers: Jed Dunham, the charismatic local prosecutor; the pampered Dewey Cheatham; the brilliant and idealistic Cornelius Howe; and Jason ‘Broadwing’ McGuire, a Native American lawyer. All are ensnared in the web spun by Artemis Fry, a confidence man of many…