Serve and Protect by Sheldon Siegel

First Sentence:  The Honorable Elizabeth McDaniel tapped her microphone, and her overflowing courtroom went silent.

      

Rookie cop Johnny Bacigalupi pulls over a car on a routine traffic stop.  The driver flees, the cop calls for backup, and the driver is shot and killed.  A gun is found under the perp.  The cops declare it a justified shooting.  But is it?  Mike Daley is currently head of the Felony Division of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.  When the DA decides to prosecute Johnny on murder charges, Mike takes a leave of absence in order to defend his godson.

      

No one writes a courtroom scene better than Siegal.  It is also a wonderful introduction to Mike Daley.  However, no matter how serious the theme, Spiegel uses humor as a perfect balance—“If Luther’s case appeared in a Grisham  novel, nobody would have believed it.” He also uses Mike’s internal narrative as a tool to provide interesting and informative information on various topics such as how California law works.  

      

Every major city has its families with generations of cops, firemen, and lawyers, and in Mike’s case, a private investigator brother, his wife who is his boss, and a niece, a court deputy.  And then, there’s Terrence “The Terminator” Love.  In some ways, San Francisco is a much a character as are the people. 

      

Seigel relates some of the City’s painful history related to Jim Jones and the Peoples’ Temple cult, as well as the issue of immigration—“I’ve been here since I was a kid.  I’m a U.S. citizen.”  He shows how quickly situations can escalate from anger to violence, to death.  The debate as to whether to take a plea bargain for a lesser offense is strongly prevented, especially with a client who insists they are innocent—“So you think morality has a sliding scale?”

      
“Serve and Protect” has strong characters, interesting information about the law, excellent plot twists, and a very well-done ending that wasn’t one which could have been predicted.  

SERVE AND PROTECT (Legal Thriller-Mike Daley/Rosie Fernandez-San Francisco, CA-Contemp) – VG+

      Siegel, Sheldon – 9^th in series
      Sheldon M. Siegel, Inc. – February 2018