Heady Waters

Mike Hanigan, a brilliant but chronically underachieving young attorney, is drinking his way through a mundane daily existence as a judicial law clerk for a federal bankruptcy judge. But a grisly decapitation of a senator's lesbian daughter in Hanigan's hometown, and the prodding of a fiery intelligent female colleague, ignite a self-awakening in Hanigan, thrusting him into the very heart of a murder investigation and shaking him free from a lifestyle of apathy and indifference. With timely assists from a casual but clever down-home homicide investigator, an eccentric young minister, and a hard-partying collection of rough-and-tumble "river rats," Hanigan helps untangle a murderous web of sex, money, and dirty politics and, in the process, unearths in himself a wellspring of passion and purpose.