If the Airbus mess seems like a story that won’t ever go away, it’s partly because underneath the litany of deception, professional misconduct, kickback allegations, axes to grind, and other assorted muck, there remain key questions that have yet to be satisfactorily answered. Although A Secret Trial outlines some of the scandal’s outstanding issues, it doesn’t resolve them, so it likely won’t be the last book starring former prime minister Brian Mulroney, investigative journalist Stevie Cameron, wheeler-dealer Karlheinz Schreiber, and a chorus of bungling RCMP officers.

William Kaplan is a lawyer and the author of several books, including Presumed Guilty, in which he opined that Mulroney was unfairly targeted by allegations that he was part of an illegal commission scheme surrounding Air Canada’s $1.8-billion purchase of planes from Airbus Industries. Kaplan was driven to write a sequel primarily, it seems, because he was cheesed off that during the interviews for the first book, Mulroney was less than forthcoming about the extent of his relationship with Schreiber. Moreover, Kaplan was incensed to find out that at the same time the former PM was suing the federal government for $50-million, he actually received $300,000 from Schreiber for an unexplained business transaction, which contradicted his earlier claim that the two men had little to do with one another. Because of those points, A Secret Trial is presented as Kaplan’s attempt to correct history, which sounds noble but in this case is a thin premise for a book.

Kaplan also argues that Cameron knew all along she was being used as a confidential police informant, an argument that sounds like a diatribe at times. Given that Kaplan and Cameron have locked horns in the past, it would be better to have an account of Cameron’s part in the debacle from someone who can’t be accused of bias. The book concludes with an odd afterword by Norman Spector, a former Mulroney chief of staff, which reads like a short memoir that sheds little light on the topic at hand.

The most valuable part of the book is its dense account of a legal proceeding so secret that for months no one was even allowed to say it was taking place. It’s probably the only aspect of the whole sorry saga that could still shock anyone, and it’s definitely worth the slog.