Incriminating Evidence

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