The Barnes & Noble ReviewImperfect VerdictsTraitors fascinate Janet Malcolm. In much discussed New Yorker articles, she has offered searing portraits of convicted murder Jeffrey MacDonald, Freudian scholar Jeffrey Masson, and the biographers of Sylvia Plath. She is one of the few contemporary journalists to delve beyond personality; her profiles instead explore the moral problems inherent in journalism, psychoanalysis and biography. Ironically, she became caught up in her own moral drama when one of her subjects — Jeffrey Masson — accused her of betrayal — saying she had misquoted him referring to himself as an "intellectual gigolo" among other things. A lengthy court case followed. Malcolm was ultimately exonerated. But, perhaps, this episode provoked her interest in the subject of her most recent work: the machinations of the legal system; the story of a woman wrongly accused.In 1996, Sheila McGough, a woman just out of jail, sent Janet Malcolm an intriguing letter: "I was a defense lawyer who irritated some federal judges and federal prosecutors in the course of defending a client... I didn't commit any of the 14 felonies I was convicted of. The U.S. Government office in Alexandria 'framed' me."McGough had represented a con man named Bob Bailes; a relentless schemer who sold phony insurance companies through ads he placed in The Wall Street Journal. According to the prosecutor, "Sheila became too close to Bob Bailes, and began to handle his business affairs, and as the business affairs of a con man like Bailes involve conning people, so too did the defendantbecomeinvolved in the con schemes." Specifically, McGough was accused of pocketing thousands of dollars sent to Bailes by hopeful investors. Like a dogged private investigator, Janet Malcolm spent over a year "poking and peering" at the case. As she reviews transcripts and interviews, she