Juries are the hinge of our justice system, yet we know almost nothing about them. The jury is a very secret cabal, protected by the law of parliament that prevents outsiders from soliciting jurors' stories and the law of human fear that dissuades jurors from identifying themselves.

Lawyers and judges speak platitudes about the wisdom and community values juries bring to bear, but privately many agree with the judge who said using a jury is "asking the ignorant to use the incomprehensible to decide the unknowable". It's clear from Malcolm Knox's experience of a long jury trial that both can be true.

From the extraordinary account of a dramatic murder trial and the equally remarkable story of how 12 vastly different people, brought together by chance and given the power to decide one man's future, can find common ground, Knox shows how the jury system can work --- despite the failures of the system that undermine it.

Through interviews with barristers, solicitors and other players in the criminal justice system, the thoughts of jurors themselves, and a week on the couch watching pop culture jurors Henry Fonda, Demi Moore and Pauly Shore grapple with the big questions --- such as what's for lunch --- Knox investigates the tricks of the trade and sketches the difference between what courts think juries should be and what juries really are.

Malcolm Knox is the author of four books, including the novels Summerland and A Private Man, shortlisted for the NSW and Victorian Premiers' Awards, The Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (SE Asia and Oceania region). He is literary editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and won a Walkley Award for investigative journalism in 2004. He lives in Sydney with his wife and two children.