Book excerpt: When the love of his life is slain in an assault on a hospital by terrorists striving for maximum carnage, John Foxcroft, first violinist of the National Symphony Orchestra and ex-Marine bandsman, grieves inconsolably and vows vengeance. On learning that the killers acquired their automatic rifles legally in the United States through a loophole in the law that allows unlicensed dealers to sell without background checks, he focuses his rage on powerful interests that thwart strict gun laws. His armed campaign panics the gun establishment by destroying the offices of the American Firearms Association and a gun show, but without inflicting human injury. An arrest leading to trial locks the advocates of gun control and gun rights into a fierce debate, which reaches its climax in an internationally headlined criminal trial. A maverick judge permits freewheeling debate to displace rules of testimony in a trial modeled procedurally after the historical Scopes monkey trial. In the novel's most noteworthy contribution to the real-world gun debate, the defense demolishes the scientific foundations of the pro-gun case, represented by the prosecution, with a simple yet overpowering logic. Biographical sketches and events in the lives of the characters illuminate the human side of actions leading to and flowing from the hospital massacre. John mends his heartbreak in a relationship with Libby Taylor, also a survivor of the hospital massacre. Defense Attorney Aaron Klein and Jesuit priest, Father James Rourke, conspire to conceal John's role as shooter. The saga of the Al Qaeda terrorists, sanctified by Osama Bin Laden, takes the reader from the mountains bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan to the United States, then to Guantanamo where the captives undergo interrogation. Police strategizing to catch the shooter, journalists' putting events into context, gun show pageantry, gun lore, brainstorming in gun association meetings, and jurors' deliberations bring to life the strategies and tactics of the combatants in the gun wars. Although this is a work of fiction, the claims, counterclaims, and evidence set forth in the trial testimony are authentic.