"On a San Francisco street dark and dense with fog, somebody has shot and killed United States Senator Jeremy Fullerton in the front seat of his car. The police arrest Jamaal Washington, a young black man. The case is a career maker, but no attorney in the Bay Area will touch it because of its explosive nature.".

"Which is exactly why outsider Joseph Antonelli leaves the comfort of his Portland, Oregon, practice and heads for "The City" to take on Jamaal's defense. Working for Antonelli are two advantages: His client is a clean-cut pre-med honor student at Berkeley; and the dead senator's many enemies don't mourn - they even welcome - his passing.

Working against him is one glaring, seemingly overpowering fact: the inability of the defendant to explain why he was caught with the murder weapon right next to his hand as he lay unconscious, shot in the back as he fled from the scene of the crime.".

"Mounting his defense, Antonelli will navigate a terrain ruled by backroom politics and old-world money, a realm of men with power and of women with wealth and influence using each other with no thought to the consequences. He will unravel a frightening chain of espionage, betrayal, and violent assassination that spirals far beyond the brute simplicities of a common street crime.

And, determined to win his case and prevail in an unforgiving world, he will face the most personal, most dangerous peril of all, the hazard of becoming a man exactly like Senator Jeremy Fullerton himself, one who knows everyone's secrets and tells everyone lies."--BOOK JACKET.