Garner's lean controlled style sets the perfect tone for this real-life courtroom drama, in which Robert Farquharson is tried for the murder of this three young children by plunging his car into a dam lake and allowing them to drown. Farquharson insisted that cough syncope--a blackout induced by uncontrolled coughing--caused the accident, and that he couldn't rescue the three boys from the car. Garner is a daily attendant on the proceedings and the appeal, and her mesmerizing account focuses more on the way trials attempt to make sense of the incomprehensible than on the emotional toll of such a horrific incident. Garner is obviously an admirer of Janet Malcolm, and her story benefits by it. Not a whodunnit, the book's focus remains solidly on the process and the people, with the result that unsatisfying questions are left unanswered. If this was a tragic accident, why were the ignition, headlights, and heater found in the off position when the car was recovered? If the trial left these questions hanging--which it did--so does Garner. Just like real life.