As chief legal counsel for the archbishop of San Francisco, Mark Dooher could not divorce his wife, therefore he murdered her. So say the police and the novel is the story of his trial, a conflict between a tenacious police detective and the powerful lawyer. By the author of A Certain Justice.

"Dismas Hardy agrees to take an appeal to overturn the murder conviction of National Guard reservist Evan Scholler. Scholler had plenty of reasons for revenge--but as Dismas delves into the case, he begins to uncover a terrible truth that drops him right into the complicated world of government conspiracy, assassination, and betrayal." --From publisher description.

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.

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...