Perfect Alibi (Mike Daley Series #7) »

Beloved Bay Area author Sheldon Siegel returns with a dramatic new case that hits way too close to home for the law firm of Fernandez and Daley.

The seventh installment in this bestselling, critically-acclaimed series opens with Mike Daley representing a tattooed record store clerk in a lawsuit against the manufacturer of her vibrator — the “marital aid” failed to turn off at a critical moment, and Mike the ex-priest is forced to brave his embarrassment and demonstrate the faulty on/off switch for a skeptical judge.

Things quickly take a darker turn, however, when Mike and Rosie learn that their sixteen-year-old daughter’s boyfriend has been arrested in the beating death of his father, a Superior Court judge. Bobby Fairchild claims that he found his father’s body after returning home from a date with Grace. The police contend that his parents’ acrimonious divorce sent the boy over the edge — they found him at the scene holding the bloody hammer that was used to kill his father. With their daughter as Bobby’s only alibi, Mike and Rosie take the case and uncover a sex scandal that will take them into the homes of some of San Francisco’s most prominent citizens.

Publishers Weekly

In Siegel's so-so seventh mystery featuring San Francisco defense counsel Mike Daley (after 2008's Judgment Day), Daley and his ex-wife and legal partner, Rosie Fernandez, are weighing a return to the Public Defender's Office when they get immersed in a murder case that's all too personal. Their 16-year-old daughter Grace's boyfriend, Bobby Fairchild, is arrested for the bludgeoning murder of his father, a judge. The police case appears to be open and shut: Fairchild was found, literally red-handed, holding the bloody hammer used in the crime. Daley and Fernandez believe his protestations of innocence, based on his alibi--Grace herself. Under orders from Fairchild's mother, the lawyers scramble to identify the real killer in the few days they have before the preliminary hearing. Even lay readers will spot errors in courtroom procedures. Lackluster prose ("Murder cases are hard enough without a stressed-out teenager and a four-year-old in your office") doesn't help. (Sept.)