Lund challenges the scary, gruff patriarchs of Copenhagen's politics and top-rank police, headbutting the truth until old alibis dissolve, fierce loyalties are disrupted and the most innocent faces give way to guilt.
Mr. Mason's resignation letter, which he tweeted under the entirely reasonable notion that it would leak anyway, said he was leaving to spend more time with his family, the age-old alibi of dismissed chiefs everywhere.
On Friday, the government is expected to try to poke holes in Mr. Blanton's 38-year-old alibi -- a date with yet another woman -- and to play secretly recorded audiotapes of Mr. Blanton discussing the bombing and its planning.
Masters of distraction, they are seeking to replace the alibis of old — "resistance" to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and resentment of the power of the United States — by stoking new, and far more dangerous, fears.
Later poems that can seem, according to Mr Longley, like "an alibi for an old poet's philandering" are left out.
At the trial, Mr. Spencer's lawyers argued that he had been at a park on the night of the crime, talking with a 16-year-old girl, who corroborated his alibi.
The never-ending game of finger-pointing now collides with a new president who is unwilling to accept the old excuses and shop-worn alibis.
In 2002, Stuart Campbell was found guilty of the murder of his 15-year-old niece after his text message alibi was shown to be a forgery.
With listeners over her shoulder, the reporter Sarah Koenig has anthologized the case, pulling apart old evidence, uncovering new facts and alibis, and raising questions about whether a young man belongs in prison for the rest of his life.
A 90-year-old man in California has been charged in the slaying of his 67-year-old stepdaughter after police alleged his alibi was untrue based on evidence from her fitness tracker.
