Last Call (Mike Daley/Rosie Fernandez #13)

A bar. A body. A bloody knife. Defense attorneys and former spouses, Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez have come a long way from their days working in a converted martial arts studio above a Chinese restaurant. Rosie just won her second term as Public Defender, and Mike is the co-head of the Felony Division. The ex-spouses-with-benefits are enjoying their newly empty nest. Their daughter is a USC alum who is making movies at Pixar. Their son is a freshman at UC-Berkeley. Finally, there is a semblance of order in their lives. It doesn’t last long. Mike wasn’t expecting the early-morning call from his 86-year-old uncle, John Dunleavy. This morning Big John arrived at his namesake bar to find the body of a San Francisco police officer in the alley, a bloody knife at his side. The cops arrest Big John’s grandson, Joey, who runs the bar and was friends with the cop, Eddie Corcoran. Witnesses confirm that Joey and Corcoran argued at Dunleavy’s shortly before last call. The alleged murder weapon is Joey’s Boy Scout knife. The only fingerprints are his. Officer Corcoran was a tough cop whose life went off the rails after his partner was killed two years earlier. Infidelity and alcohol abuse led his wife to file for divorce. Excessive force and harassment while arresting drug dealers and the homeless resulted in his recent suspension from the force. Corcoran was on the verge of permanently losing his job, custody of his children and everything. Mike agrees to represent Joey. With relentless assistance from Rosie, his cop-turned-private-investigator-brother Pete, and Big John, Mike engages in a desperate search for the truth that takes them around San Francisco -- from the foggy streets of the Sunset to the colorful corners of the Mission to the homeless encampments in Golden Gate Park to the drug-infested hotels in the Tenderloin. View Less