NOTE:  All plots, story-lines, characters, events, etc., are copyright-protected and registered with the WGA West.

Synopsis:  crime/thriller
From his book, The Ninth Commandment; Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness, comes the true story of JOE TOFURI, a Massachusetts licensed Private Detective specializing in criminal defense work and dangerous personal client cases. After seventeen years in the life, Joe is tormented by haunting night terrors, besieged by incessant migraines, thoroughly exhausted, and becoming more prone to violence each day.

Joe finishes a treacherous kidnapping case where his beating of the kidnapper captures the attention of his men. He immediately realizes it’s time for him to get out. But when defense attorney BILL JOHNSON is assigned a loser child homicide case by a Boston judge, Joe is pulled back into the world he no longer desires to contend with.

Girlfriend SANDRA BISHOP is deeply concerned with Joe’s drastic changes in behavior, especially his violent tendencies which she observes during a witness interview in a night club.

Soon the case becomes high profile, and the defendant, MIGUEL ORTEGA, a Mexican immigrant in America on a work visa, has already been pronounced guilty by the media. During the investigation Joe and his associate PI, MIKE GARRIGAN, enter a community of people overwrought with hate and bitterness, and refuse to cooperate. Joe suffers a terrible beating at the hands of neighborhood thugs, and receives faxed death threats, placing his life in constant danger.

Rapidly spiraling out of control, and constantly taking pain-killers to subdue his massive migraines, Joe struggles through the investigation, unable to find a single witness for the defense. With his horrifying night terrors and terrible headaches attacking him more frequently, an inept defense attorney pleads with Joe to take on an Assault & Battery case. Now working two different cases, it’s becoming more difficult for Joe to get out.

Working both cases deep into each night, and swallowing massive doses of pain killers to quell his pounding headaches, Joe finally breaks down in front of Sandra. What Sandra discovers from his violent ranting not only astonishes her, but terrifies her, as well.

Then Joe is contacted by a Boston police detective who tells him the kidnapper he had viciously beaten is the nephew of the head of one of the Boston Families. Now constantly on the alert and looking over his shoulder, Joe is falling deeper and deeper into his own hell.

Painfully struggling through the investigations, the more people he interviews, the more violent he becomes. Joe is now a dangerous time bomb waiting for someone to push the wrong button. He is racing against a ticking clock, struggling to keep his sanity, and solve devastating cases that are tearing him apart. As the tension continues to climb to the highest levels possible, Joe fights to defeat the most difficult foe of his entire life... the battle with himself.