The Ophelia Cut by John Lescroart

In The Ophelia Cut, John Lescroart returns to his successful formula featuring San Francisco defense attorney Dismas Hardy, Hardy's brother-in-law Moses McGuire, and his best friend homicide lieutenant Abe Glisky.  These three and Hardy's law partner, Gino Rourke participated in a murder (in a previous book) they rationalize as justified.  Now six years later they have kept this agonizing secret that if revealed could destroy their lives.  McGuire is particularly haunted by their crime.  As a recovering alcoholic, he has sworn off drinking in fear that when drunk he may divulge too much.

McGuire has a beautiful 23-year-old daughter who has poor taste in men. Brittany prefers the mysterious stranger to the stable long lasting relationship.  Consequently she dates and rejects many potential partners. Her most recent conquest, Rick Jessup proves to be a misogynist and has a history of violence toward women.  He is chief of staff to an ambitious yet devious city supervisor, Liam Goodman.  Goodman's leading campaign contributor is an organized crime boss who has a growing distaste for the egotistical Jessup.  So Jessup has enemies in both his personal and professional lives.  When Brittany dumps him, Jessup takes offense an sets her up for date rape.  One day later Jessup is found dead in his apartment.

Moses McGuire, Brittany's father becomes the prime suspect and is quickly arrested. Quickly because the chief of police learns person of interest Moses McGuire is a personal acquaintance of her homicide chief, Abe Glisky and of the district attorney, Wes Farrell.  The police chief circumvents normal procedure and manipulates the system for an expedited arrest.

Dismas Hardy of course becomes McGuire's defense attorney and the trial begins. Brittany is called as a prosecution witness to demonstrate her rape as motive for her father's alleged crime.  She cuts her hair extremely short for the court appearance down playing her image as the beautiful bombshell heart-breaker (thus the book's title.)  As the overwhelming evidence against McGuire is introduced, Hardy focuses on planting reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors.  His investigator Wyatt Hunt finds Jessup has made several enemies capable of murder but introducing such evidence into the courtroom gets complicated by legal procedure and disappearing witnesses.  Hardy, who has a reputation of pulling a rabbit out of the hat at the last minute to win acquittal for his clients, becomes stymied with his friend's life at stake.

Lescroart does a brilliant job in keeping it fresh and intriguing in his 14th novel with this same cast of characters. Flawed and human as they are, they face morally complex situations that continually intertwine and circle back to one another. Meanwhile whether you agree with each character's action or not, you somehow empathize and find yourself their advocate...quite an accomplishment for the author I'd say.