Dismas Hardy is finally at the top: as a managing partner at his thriving, recently reorganized lawyer, he’s a rainmaker and fix-it guy for clients leery of taking their chances in a courtroom. Today Hardy’s up-and-coming affiliate, Amy Wu, brings him a high-profile case: Andrew Bartlett, the seventeen-year-old son of the prominent SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA family, continues to be caught for the double slaying of his sweetheart and his British teacher. The D.A. really wants to try him as an adult. Determined to find the case about THE NEXT Seat into juvenile courtroom, and overwhelmed with the mounting proof against her customer, Wu asks Hardy to sit second chair on her behalf in Bartlett’s protection.

As the Bartlett case moves swiftly to trial, another series of murders grips the city. An unseen killer seems to be shooting citizens wantonly, and as fear and anxiety build throughout the Executioner (as he’s quickly dubbed in the ensuing mass media frenzy), Abe Glitsky, the recently promoted deputy key from the Investigations Bureau, qualified prospects the desperate hunt to avoid him.

With the town in the verge of panic, Hardy and Glitsky are locked in a race against time—to save lots of a client also to catch a murderer. But there is nothing what it appears, and as both men’s situations twist and convert to their surprising conclusions, the very foundations of San Francisco’s legal program will become shaken to the core.