Harlan Donnally

Mt. Shasta is far from the San Francisco sidewalk on which Harlan Donnally's life nearly ended in a crossfire-But all too close to a decades-old secret that will force him into another. The former detective swore he'd never play anyone's postman. But a dying friend's plea takes Donnally bearing a letter alive with tragedy toward a sister long dead-the victim of the bizarre criminality of a counterculture that had lost its way. Stunned to learn that her killer was never prosecuted, Donnally soon finds himself in battle against a broken justice system and on a trail of evil into a dangerous borderland in which the falsely pious and the wealthy abuse the young and the poor. And though each step takes him farther down a perilous path that wrenches him between his inner demons and his mission to redeem a brother's love, he won't stop until he knows the truth. For Donnally made a promise to a dead man, and he'll keep it-or die trying.

Betrayal wounds. Revenge destroys. Over three decades, Hamlin's practice devolved into just another racket: intimidating witnesses, suborning perjury, destroying evidence, laundering money. But is he the victim of murder-or of a dangerous sexual encounter gone wrong? And when law enforcement believes justice has already been done, who can be trusted to find out? Once again in the city where his career came to a shattering end, former detective Harlan Donnally resolved it wouldn't be him. He had no desire to immerse himself in the deceit that was Hamlin's career... nor entangle himself in the corrupted loyalties that turned the dead lawyer's associates into both co-conspirators and suspects... nor make himself the proxy for the hatreds and betrayals Hamlin left behind. But the presiding judge demanded otherwise-and that might cost Donnally his life.

From the author of Act of Deceit and A Criminal Defense comes the third book in the thrilling series featuring ex-SFPD detective Harlan Donnally. They call it pulling the trigger. Not by a killer in the night, but by a judge on the bench. Twenty years ago, Judge Ray McMullin proved to the people of San Francisco he could pull that trigger by sentencing Israel Dominguez to death for a gangland murder. But it meant suppressing his own doubts about whether the punishment really did fit the crime. As the execution date nears, the conscience-wracked judge confesses his unease to former homicide detective Harlan Donnally on a riverbank in far Northern California. And after immersing himself in the Norteño and Sureño gang wars that left trails of bullets and blood crisscrossing the state and in the betrayals of both cops and crooks alike, Donnally is forced to question not only whether the penalty was undeserved, but the conviction itself. Soon those doubts and questions double back, for in the aging judge's panic, in his lapses of memory and in his confusions, Donnally begins to wonder whether he's chasing facts of the case or just phantoms of a failing mind. But there's no turning back, for the edge of night is fast closing in on Dominguez, on McMullin, and on Donnally himself.