Detective Sarah Vance finally has the evidence that could destroy Marcus Vale. Then her fifteen-year-old son disappears.
Vale does not simply want the evidence back. He wants Sarah to corrupt it herself. Remove the original ledger. Falsify the chain of custody. Leave behind a trail that can destroy the case — and her career with it.
But when Sarah tests a channel she believes is secure, Vale repeats her private words back to her. Someone — or something — inside the system is watching. Every colleague becomes a question. Every official safeguard becomes a possible trap. And every minute she spends deciding whom to trust is another minute her son remains in the hands of a man who understands that fear is less useful than hope.
With a compromised justice system closing around her and the deadline approaching, Sarah must find a way to save her son without becoming the very thing she has spent her career fighting.
BY HOOK OR BY CROOK is a tense procedural crime thriller about corruption, coercion, institutional trust, and the price of doing the right thing when every available choice is wrong.
