Conspiracy focuses on the clashes, plots, and perjuries that characterized seven notorious trials in Irish legal and political history from 1803 to 1916. Each trial shows how the legal system was contaminated by a political agenda and how that political agenda unwittingly incited great moments of legal drama, such as the disintegration of the forger, Richard Pigott, under the cross examination of Sir Charles Russell at the Parnell Commission. The book, written in an accessible style, also covers the trials of Robert Emmet, Daniel O'Connell, and the court martials after the Easter Rising.