Jake Reed is a mid-list novelist who gets bored with his own hero. The hero is also named Jake. One afternoon the writer ends the book with a sudden car crash, types “The End,” and drives to Starbucks to meet his publisher. On the way, he dies in the same stupid crash.

He wakes in a courtroom built from leftover scenes. Every character he ever invented is in the gallery. The charge is the unnecessary murder of his main character. The plaintiff is Jake himself.

Two discarded characters serve as the lawyers. Witnesses walk in from the trash folder. A talking cat has opinions. A forgotten dog does not need a speech. The jury is a knight, a paper draft, a knitting grandmother, and other people Jake abandoned when the work got hard.

Dead Trial is a courtroom comedy about lazy endings, leftover pages, and a writer who has to answer for the people he threw away.

Calvin Ward