Leo Maxwell

Everything seems backwards with this case: a lawyer falls victim to a crime, the police seem to be advocating for the wrong side of the law, and young attorney Leo Maxwell is forced to do an investigator's job in pursuit of the man who tried to kill his brother. Leo had been raised by his older brother, Teddy, a top criminal lawyer both renowned and notorious for his talent and ruthlessness. Though different in character and viewpoint, Leo always tried to emulate Teddy, striving to be recognized by his brother as a fellow lawyer in his own right. The two are at lunch when Teddy, supposed to give the closing argument of his current trial that afternoon, is shotin public, in the middle of the bar. But the shooter escapes without Leo catching even a glimpse of him. While Teddy lies in a coma, Leo searches for the shooter, soon realizing that the list of possible suspects is much larger than he could have possibly imagined.

Leo Maxwell thinks he's found a career-making case when a mysterious woman nearly runs him down, then appears at his office to hire him to defend her brother on a murder charge. One problem: Leo hasn't actually met the client when he sets out to investigate what seems like a hot tip on a burgeoning scandal in the Oakland Police Department. When he presents evidence of deep-set corruption in the Department to the District Attorney's office, he quickly learns that all is not as it seems, beginning with Leo's client and the alluring woman who hired him. Leo's client, as he learns to his humiliation, is actually represented by Nikki Matson, one of Oakland's most notorious gangland lawyers. What's more, the client knows nothing about Leo being hired to defend him and claims not even to have a sister. Soon after Leo realizes that he's been set up by unknown persons to be the number one enemy of both the police and the gangs, he also discovers he's also being framed for Matson's murder. He knows he's a marked man unless he can bring those responsible to justice. Bodies pile up as Leo closes in on his tormenters, while at the same time, they are closing in on him.

Faced with evidence of stunning prosecutorial misconduct, a San Francisco judge has ordered a new trial for the Maxwell brothers' father, Lawrence, who was convicted of killing their mother twenty-one years before. A prison snitch soon turns up dead, with Lawrence the only suspect, and Leo teams up with hotshot attorney Nina Schuyler to defend Lawrence against murder charges both old and new. Working the streets while Nina handles the action in the courtroom, Leo is forced to confront the darkness at the center of his life as he follows a trail of corruption and danger that leads to the very steps of City Hall.

After working to free his father from prison in Fox Is Framed, Leo has now left private practice and is working as a public defender in San Francisco. He and his co-counsel Jordan Walker are in the midst of trial, brilliantly defending Randall Rodrigues, a mentally ill homeless man whom they contend falsely confessed to the rape of a young San Francisco socialite. After their client is acquitted, Leo and Jordan fall into an intense relationship-until Jordan is found brutally raped and murdered in her apartment. Leo, the last person known to have seen her alive, is the natural suspect, and the police are eager for payback after the Rodrigues case. The story takes a shocking turn when Leo and Jordan's freshly acquitted client walks into the police station and offers to confess to Jordan's murder. Upset by the rapidity with which the authorities accept this all-too-convenient confession, Jordan's grieving father tasks Leo with investigating his daughter's death. Leo agrees, though he knows exonerating Rodrigues will likely bring suspicion back on himself. Theorizing that he may be on the trail of a serial rapist and murderer, Leo instead uncovers a massive judicial fraud leading to the steps of the federal courthouse. In an explosive final confrontation, Leo will come face to face with an adversary far more powerful than any foe he has met thus far.