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 her father. Now she never will. Elaine has been murdered. The only suspect is a hopeless 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. Thrust into a bitter collaboration with Glitsky, a man confronting uncharted regions of his heart, Hardy battles to win a fair trial for Burgess, and finds himself entering a world of corruption and cold-blooded murder.