Paperback: The savvy legal team of Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez is facing a new and high-profile case. It starts with a phone call Mike Daley never expected to get, from District Attorney Prentice Marshall Gates III, San Francisco's chief law enforcement officer and front-runner candidate for California attorney general. Friends they are not - 'Skipper' Gates had led the charge to get Mike fired from his job as a partner in a prestigious law firm but Gates needs Daley now - and needs him badly. He has just been arrested.
It seems that a couple of hours earlier, Skipper has been found dazed and incoherent in a hotel room with the dead body of a young male prostitute spread-eagled on the bed. The details that continue to emerge from the crime scene are tabloid heaven. The SFPD is certain Skipper did it. The prosecutors are already talking the death penalty, and there is nothing in the mounting evidence, and certainly not in Skipper's unpersuasive denials, to convince Daley and his partner (and ex-wife) Rosie of his innocence. But even if he is lying, it is their job to defend him, and that means finding out what really happened.
Sure enough, the deeper they dig, the seamier their findings.
It is typical of this unconventional pair that they are contending with a client they dislike, evidence that clearly implicates him and an array of powerbrokers ready to cover their own questionable activities that may - or may not connect - with the victim. There is a campaign manager with his own dirty secrets, a shady Internet entrepreneur who trades flesh for cash and a prominent businessman who uses muscle to keep his enterprise prospering.
Moving from jail cell to courtroom, from the gated mansions of the San Francisco hills to the seedy streets of Mission District where drugs and bodies are always for sale, Daley and Fernandez find deception around every corner, and danger that mounts with each new revelation.
And that is before they even get to court.
Incriminating Evidence (2001) is the second book in the Mike Daley legal thriller series set in San Francisco.
About the author: Sheldon Siegel graduated from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley in 1983. He has been in private practice in San Francisco for over nineteen years and specializes in corporate and securities law with the firm of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP.
He lives in Marin County with his wife, Linda, and twin sons, Alan and Stephen.
Rating: 5/5
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