Amazon.com Review

When the rich and ambitious Prentice Marshall "Skipper" Gates III, San Francisco's district attorney, is found in a hotel room with a dead male prostitute handcuffed to the bed, it looks like an open-and-shut murder case. Gates claims he fell asleep in front of the television and woke to find the body. But no one is buying this excuse, and the DA is brought up on murder charges by his own office, which plans to seek the death penalty.

Michael Daley (defense attorney, ex-priest, and ex-public defender) agrees to take the case, though he has no great affection for the accused. Gates has had his sights set on the attorney general's office, and in San Francisco's political community, it seems everyone has slept with, betrayed, or crushed everyone else. Perhaps Gates's assertion of a vast conspiracy is true. Still, Daley believes Gates is not telling the whole truth about the case. What is he hiding? Daley's search takes him from the elite neighborhoods of San Francisco to the seedy--and deadly--underworld of the Mission District's prostitutes and drug pushers, all the while carrying on a trial that's full of twists and turns. In this follow-up to to Special Circumstances, Sheldon Siegel proves that he's no one-shot wonder. The story is brilliantly plotted, the characters are sharp and believable, and the wit as dry and pointed as ever. This new series injects some much-needed life into a genre that had gone a little stale. --Perry M. Atterberry

From Publishers Weekly

"I look around the table: my ex-wife, my ex-girlfriend and me. We aren't a law firm we're a support group. Somebody will probably name a 12-step program after us." That's Mike Daley ex-priest, ex-public defender, ex-partner in one of San Francisco's fanciest law firms describing his new team of criminal defense specialists, housed in a former martial arts studio in the Mission District. It also sums up the considerable charm and strength of Siegel's second Daley vehicle, following on the heels of the well-received Special Circumstances. Daley is an original and very appealing character in the overcrowded legal arena a gentle soul who can fight hard when he has to, and a moral man who is repelled by the greed of many of his colleagues. His latest adventure starts with a bang: Prentice "Skipper" Marshall Gates III, San Francisco's district attorney and the man responsible for getting Daley fired from his law firm, is discovered at the Fairmont Hotel next to the naked dead body of a young male prostitute. He asks Mike to defend him on murder charges, then proceeds to lie to him and withhold vital information so often that a defense lawyer with a more macho self-image would quit in anger and disgust. But Daley believes Skipper is innocent and his struggling little firm needs the money. The central parts of the book, the investigations and the trial itself, are sluggish in spots and inflated with pregnant pauses, but in the end Siegel is so good at making readers believe in Mike Daley's decency that they'll be willing to forgive any narrative lapses. Agent, Margret McBride. Major ad/promo; teaser chapter in Special Circumstances.

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