Review by Booklist Review
San Francisco detective Abe Glitsky gets a midnight call to investigate a murder that dredges up a secret from his past; it will also test his professionalism and his emotional and physical stamina. The victim is Elaine Wager, a prominent black attorney and community leader, a young woman Glitsky has only recently discovered is his daughter, a fact still unknown to everyone else, including his friends and family. Overcome by remorse and regret, Glitsky crosses the line in the investigation, denying immediate medical attention to the suspect, a drug addict named Cole Burgess. Simmering with vengeance, Glitsky gives the green light to his detectives to sweat a confession out of Burgess and ends up nearly jeopardizing the case. Glitsky's friend, Dismas Hardy, is reluctantly pulled into the case to defend Burgess from the overzealous efforts of an ambitious D.A., Sharron Pratt, who is pushing for the death penalty and hoping to revive her sinking career. The suspect is an irredeemable addict, unable to recall the events of the murder, but Hardy and Glitsky team up to vigorously investigate the apparently open-and-shut case. Glitsky is driven to redeem himself as a father, and Hardy is motivated by respect for the principles of law and justice. Their investigation unravels the unsavory secrets of Elaine's life, political corruption, and crooked legal maneuvering that threaten to wreck the careers of prominent figures in the San Francisco legal community. This is a riveting legal thriller with engaging characters, tense courtroom drama, and legal skulduggery from the author of The 13th Juror (1994) and The Mercy Rule (1998). --Vanessa Bush
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Another satisfying, character-driven legal thriller will be happily embraced by new and longtime fans of master plot-weaver Lescroart (The 13th Juror; etc.). Former San Francisco cop and current defense attorney Dismas Hardy's latest assignment pits him against his rival, D.A. Sharron Pratt, whose popularity in the polls is slipping. Although averse to murder cases, Hardy tries to help an acquaintance by defending heroin addict Cole Burgess, who is accused of murdering Assistant D.A. Elaine Wager, the popular daughter of a deceased female senator. What Hardy doesn't know (nor does anyone else) is that Wager's father is Hardy's best friend, Lt. Abe Glitsky of SFPD homicide. Abe overreacts by sweating Dismas's client into a coerced confession; under media pressure for her New Age approach to criminal justice, Pratt arms for re-election by calling for the death penalty, handling the grand jury hearing along with her chief assistant and sometime lover, Gabriel Torrey. Meanwhile, Dismas's mentor, brilliant defense attorney David Freeman, chances across evidence that may link a city official to Dash Logan, an ambulance-chasing lawyer known for his scams. Abe, suspended for leaking Cole's confession, begins to doubt Coles's guilt and decides to take on the D.A. in order to track down the real killer. Lescroart brilliantly sets scenes in the hearing phase that allow credible leeway for courtroom pyrotechnics later on. The richness and diversity of the large cast neither slows the pace nor confuses the narrative, as even minor characters take on memorable presence and depth. Readers will savor the mounting tension and the many twists and turns along the way to the surprise ending. (Apr. 23) Forecast: A vigorous, six-month marketing blitz, kicked off with the release of a teaser chapter in Lescroart's Nothing But the Truth in February, should help make his latest another bestseller. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In this sixth offering in the series and the follow-up to Nothing but the Truth, attorney Dismas Hardy not only defends confessed murderer Cole Burgess but is forced to confront the fallibility of his friend, Abe Glitsky, chief of the San Francisco Police Department's homicide division. Burgess, a heroin addict, is found near the lifeless body of a prominent female attorney, unable to remember the events that brought him there. Lescroart tantalizes readers with a tightly constructed plot in which Hardy and Glitsky track crime and political corruption to an unexpected source. The author deftly continues to build upon the personal and professional relationships among his ensemble cast, adding a new, featured player in the person of legal secretary Treya Ghent. The concluding chapters employ this strong foundation, hewn of plot and character, as a stage on which to present a powerful lesson in courtroom technique. Recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/00.]DNancy McNicol, Hagaman Memorial Lib., East Haven, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Another seminar in the sociology of criminal justice pits attorney Dismas Hardy ( Nothing but the Truth , 2000, etc.) against his old friend, San Francisco Homicide chief Lt. Abe Glitsky, and pretty much everybody else in sight. The case seems so open-and-shut it's scarcely worth going to trial. The cops find drunk junkie Cole Burgess standing over the body of Elaine Wager, the ex-A.D.A. now a partner in private practice, with the murder weapon in his hand and her jewelry in his pocket. As if the evidence weren't damning enough, Cole obligingly makes a full confession after his interrogator goes off the record to promise him a fix in return for his cooperation. But Burgess's brother-in-law, influential columnist Jeff Elliot, brings him to Hardy's attention, and Dis immediately picks up some strange inconsistencies between his confession and the crime-scene evidence. Declaring himself for the defense in spite of his misgivings, he has no reason to know that Glitsky had his own personal reasons for sweating the suspect within an inch of his sanity: Elaine was the Homicide chief's unacknowledged daughter (though his patrimony, as later events will show, must be the worst-kept secret on the Left Coast). By the time Abe comes to his own senses and cools down, the case has already gone to the prosecutionD.A. Sharron Pratt, desperate to stiffen her soft-on-crime credentials before reelection by demanding the death penalty, and her political mentor Gabriel Torrey, the chief A.D.A. who tears into the case like a starving man into a juicy steak. Can Dis stop the prosecution's runaway train at the preliminary hearing before it goes to a trial he can't possibly win? The answer isn't much more of a surprise than the revelation of who killed Elaine Wager, but Lescroart still lays on the political intrigue as fearlessly as if he were writing exposé journalism rather than courtroom drama. Doubleday Book Club/Mystery Book Club alternate selection
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