This latest in the courtroom thrillers featuring Dismas Hardy and Lt. Abe Glitsky of the San Francisco homicide squad takes the reader right down to the last page in a murder trial virtually without evidence but plenty of motive and hidden secrets. Background includes blackmail, marijuana, politics, murder, and good old-fashioned legwork and intuition, much less courtroom drama.
The manager of a popular Starbucks-like coffee emporium in San Francisco is found shot, killed by a single bullet, and the owner, a prominent woman, niece of the mayor and sister of a supervisor, is accused of the deed. Hardy has his work cut out for him to defend her with the police and prosecution stacking the cards against the defendant with little or no evidence. She is charged with a second murder as well. Both victims were known to her while they were in college and she was present at the scenes of their deaths around the time of the events. Hardy’s friend Glitsky is distracted throughout by an accident to his son and the investigation had proceeded without his supervision.
The tension mounts as the trial progresses, and the complicated plot provides an intriguing mystery for this, the author’s 20th novel. Fluidly written, sometimes Hardy’s leaps of knowledge defy one’s imagination, but, after all, that’s what makes the genre appealing. Recommended.
