Close Case

Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid likes to be where the action is: at the scene of a crime, at the arrest of a suspect, with the cops on the Major Crimes Team. But when street smart, plugged-in reporter Percy Crenshaw is brutally murdered in the midst of pursuing a major story, she knows the stakes are high...

Within days, cops have a suspect; then a confession. Yet Samantha suspects that something is very wrong, and her concerns keep coming back to the police. The cop who got the confession used tough tactics. The murdered reporter was romantically linked to a cop's wife. And all of the cops she's concerned about are close to her live-in boyfriend, Detective Chuck Forbes.

Forced to prosecute a case in which the defendant may be an innocent man, Samantha must tread carefully to uncover the truth about Percy's murder -- without tearing her career, her home life, and the city apart. But just when she thinks her job can't get any more difficult, another more shocking crime comes to light...

"Absorbing...Burke confidently lays out the procedural details." --Publishers Weekly on Close Case

A former deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, ALAFAIR BURKE is an Associate Professor at Hofstra Law School where she teaches criminal law and procedure. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School and lives in New York City. The daughter of the acclaimed crime writer James Lee Burke, her previous novels in the Samantha Kincaid series, Judgment Calls and Missing Justice, are available in paperback from St. Martin’s Press.