A first novel headed for best-seller, Keep and Bear Arms is a legal thriller brimming with realistic courtroom drama. An aging lawyer tries to save the life of a Middle-Eastern defendant facing the death penalty for the fire-bomb murder of a judge in a small Central Illinois town near Champaign Urbana, home of the University of Illinois, where much of the action takes place. Homeland Security and the FBI are waging a turf war with the local sheriff. A Christian Identity true believer plots against the lawyer, Carl Hardman, and the accused, Wally Aldin, believed to be a deep-cover Moslem extremist linked with Al Qaeda.

The author, Robert Auler, has spent a lifetime defending unpopular defendants in court, and doesn’t hold back on revealing the backroom mysteries of the legal system. The book is fast-paced and gripping; at the same time it presents a new dimension in legal fiction for thinking readers. A collision of the deepest passions of the post-9/11 age. Keep and Bear Arms is a first-class read.