Finalist for the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction:
New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni delivers another gripping legal thriller in his popular David Sloane series. The case? Defending the woman he loves against a charge of murder.
A year after the devastating murder of his wife, attorney David Sloane has returned to Seattle after three months in Mexico. At a black-tie dinner where heโs been persuaded to give the keynote address, Sloane reconnects with Barclay Reid, opposing counsel in his most prominent case. Barclay is suffering from her own personal tragedyโthe death of her teenage daughter from a drug overdose. In the aftermath, Barclay has begun an intense crusade against the Russian drug traffickers she holds responsible for her daughterโs death, pursuing them with a righteousness that matches Sloaneโs own zeal for justice. Despite their adversarial past, Sloane is drawn to Barclay and for the first time since his wife died, he finds himself beginning to have romantic feelings again.
But when Barclayโs crusade stalls and a Russian drug dealer turns up dead, she stands accused of murder, and Sloane is her chosen defender. Amid the swirling media frenzy, in his first criminal case, Sloane finds himself once again in harmโs way, while mounting evidence suggests that Barclay is a woman with many secretsโand may not be quite as innocent as she seems.
With his signature fast-paced, page-turning action and exhilarating plot twists, Robert Dugoni once again proves why heโs so often been named the heir to Grishamโs literary throne.