Down and out lawyer, Rusty Ingraham left behind a murdered woman and a houseboat splattered with blood. All the evidence said Ingraham was in San Francisco Bay, dead, but his friend, Dismas Hardy, isn't so sure. Hardy has to find out, because a stone-cold killer, now paroled, once threatened to kill Ingraham and Hardy.

When Dismas Hardy agrees to clean up the caseload of recently disappeared attorney Charlie Bowen, he thinks it will be easy. But one of the cases is far from small-time--the sensational clash between National Guard reservist Evan Scholler and an ex-Navy SEAL and private contractor named Ron Nolan. Two rapid-fire events in Iraq conspired to bring the men into fatal conflict: Nolan's relationship with Evan's girlfriend, Tara, a beautiful school-teacher...

"Defense attorney Dismas Hardy returns to defend a close friend against murder charges in New York Times bestselling author John Lescroart's most suspenseful and intricately plotted novel to date"--

Late one night, a teenage African American foster child named Tanya Morgan plummets to her death from the overpass above San Francisco's Stockton tunnel. But did she fall...or was she pushed? Rushing to produce a convictable suspect in the glare of the media spotlight, homicide inspectors focus their attention on a naive young man named Greg Treadway. Greg is a middle school teacher and he volunteers as a Special Advocate for foster children. At first,...

"In "master of the legal thriller" (Chicago Sun-Times) John Lescroart's electrifying new novel, attorney Dismas Hardy is called to defend the least likely suspect of his career: his longtime, trusted assistant who is suddenly being charged as an accessory to murder. Dismas Hardy knows something is amiss with his trusted secretary, Phyllis. Her out-of-character behavior and sudden disappearances concern Hardy, especially when he learns that her convict...