In San Francisco's world of crime and punishment, everyone knows Abraham Glitsky. Half-black, half-Jewish, weathered by decades of running a straight course between criminals and politicians, Glitsky's hard to miss. But they don't know he has an illegitimate daughter, Elaine, herself a highly respect lawyer, who never knew her father.
Now she never will for, as Glitsky hears in the early hours of the morning, his daughter has been murdered. The only suspect is a hopeless heroin addict, Cole Burgess, brother-in-law of a leading investigative journalist, who, like Glitsky, has been lawyer Dismas Hardy's friend for years. Hardy liked Elaine and is not disposed to defend the man who probably killed her. Thrust into a bitter collaboration with Glitsky, Hardy battles to win a fair trial for Burgess, and finds himself entering a world of corruption and cold-blooded murder . . .
