Summary

Lieutenant Abraham Glitsky is known by everyone in San Francisco's world of crime and punishment. But they don't know everything about him. In particular that he has an illegitimate daughter, Elaine, who never knew who her father was, and now she never will. Elaine has been murdered. The only suspect is a homeless heroin addict, and Dismas Hardy - a close friend of Glitsky's - agrees to defend the alleged killer when the DA calls for the death penalty. It's a decision that enrages Glitsky. But slowly Glitsky begins to see that the clues to Elaine's death might lie in her professional life, in the investigative job of 'special master' the courts had assigned the dead woman...