SEQUESTERED - A new novel by P. Clay Sherrod
A fast moving story that starts with an odd murder in an upscale area of Southern California; a woman is discovered by her husband hanging from a tree when he returns home in the dusky twilight of evening and calls police. Breaking down in anguish on his front porch immediately, the police arrive quickly in the drive at the opposite side of the huge estate. After an initial check-list report they walk around the spacious grounds only to find that the woman's body has disappeared from the noose still swinging high above the ground.
She had vanished and, other than the bloody noose, there were virtually no signs of evidence within the gardens.
Three years later he is arrested for the murder, and a trial with very little evidence and no body begins hearing testimony, all the while with piling up odd mishaps and multiple delays and confusion; a juror is murdered and another goes missing and sequestration is ordered. It is a fiasco and when delay after delay keeps them stuck in sequestration with no progress, the jurors begin to believe that this is really not a trial about Nikki Zulikova's murder at all.
Ultimately we learn that the trial has nothing to do with the murder, but rather an elaborate trap for the woman's family who has been involved in international war crimes, with huge Ponzi and money laundering operations based entirely on war machines and money provided the "invaded" countries by the free world, all under the watchful manipulation of the powerful Ukrainian Zhulikova family who have moved their entourage to Malibu to supposedly watch over the proceedings.
Where did the woman's body go and who inside the courtroom cracks the connection between the trial for Nikki and the global criminal activity of her father, Nikolas Zhulikova?
Things are not anything near what they appear and there is a twist at every dark turn.
Sequestered is a story of local color with international and intimately personal intrigue. The lives of many people are about to twist in a remarkable way.
