Mike Daley/Rosie Fernandez Mystery Books In Publication Order
- Special Circumstances (2000)
- Incriminating Evidence (2001)
- Criminal Intent (2002)
- Final Verdict (2003)
- The Confession (2004)
- Judgment Day (2008)
- Perfect Alibi (2009)
- Felony Murder Rule (2017)
- Serve and Protect (2018)
- Hot Shot (2019)
- The Dreamer (2020)
- Final Out (2021)
David Gold Books In Publication Order
- The Terrorist Next Door (2012)
Mike Daley/Rosie Fernandez Mystery Book Covers
David Gold Book Covers
Sheldon Siegel Books Overview
Special Circumstances
Introducing an electrifying new voice in legal fiction in a phenomenal thriller unlike anything you’ve read before…
Debut author Sheldon Siegel bursts into the legal arena with a riveting courtroom drama, exposing the world of big time law firms and lawyers in a sharp witted, wonderfully sardonic page turner of a novel. Meet Mike Daley. Ex priest. Ex public defender. Ex husband. And as of yesterday, ex partner at Simpson & Gates, one of San Francisco’s most prominent law firms. Today he’s out on his own, setting up a private practice on the wrong side of town. Then his best friend and former colleague is charged with a brutal double murder. Daley has his first client and is instantly catapulted into a high profile case involving the prestigious law firm that just booted him. The victims are one of Simpson & Gates’s most powerful partners and a beautiful young associate. There’s a suicide note on the partner’s computer, but neither the police nor the ambitious district attorney believe it’s authentic and they think the man they’ve arrested is the killer. It’s up to Mike Daley to prove them wrong, but time is very short. As Daley prepares his case, he begins to uncover the firm’s dirtiest secrets and dirty they are but he also discovers that his friend, too, has a lot to hide. Even as the trial is under way, Daley and his investigators are still frantically digging for evidence that will clear their client. Against a chorus of morning press reports and nightly TV commentaries picking apart each day’s session, Daley comes to realize that ambition, politics, greed, and long standing grudges will play just as important a role in the outcome as truth and justice. This is the real world of law practice at work, and it’s as ruthless as it is startling. Brilliantly paced, witty, crackling with energy and suspense, Special Circumstances not only brings us to a stunning denouement; it zestfully reminds us why we love to hate lawyers but can’t get enough of courtroom drama when it’s done this well. In a stunning turn of events, Daley’s best friend, an ex colleague, is charged with the double murder of two lawyers at the old firm and asks Daley to defend him. Cobbling together a defense team composed of himself, his ex wife, and a onetime courtroom fixture named Mort Goldberg who’s been wished on him against his better judgment, Daley finds he’s got more to defend than his friend’s innocence. The newly elected media hungry District Attorn ey, also a former colleague, will prosecute the case himself. As court is called into session, it becomes clear that in this trial ambition, honor, friendship, greed, and longstanding grudges will play as important a role as truth and justice. Rarely has a legal thriller debut so accurately depicted not only the inner workings of the legal system but the crack ling energy it takes to build and defend a felony case. In Special Circumstances author Sheldon Siegel reminds us why we love to hate lawyers but can’t get enough of courtroom drama when it’s done this well.
Incriminating Evidence
Special Circumstances introduced an exciting new voice in legal fiction a talent so original, it drew comparisons with the very top tier of courtroom thriller writers. Now Sheldon Siegel delivers a new challenge for defense attorney Mike Daley ex priest, ex husband, ex public defender and it’s a high profile zinger: a case he doesn t think he can win for a client he can t stand. It starts with a phone call Mike Daley never expected to get, from District Attorney Prentice Marshall Gates III, San Francisco s chief law enforcement officer and front runner candidate for California attorney general. Friends they re not; Skipper Gates had led the charge to get Mike fired from his job as a partner in a prestigious law firm. But Gates needs Daley now and needs him badly. He s just been arrested. It seems that a couple of hours earlier he woke up in an armchair in his hotel room and found the dead body of a young male prostitute in the bed. The details that continue to emerge from the crime scene are tabloid heaven. The SFPD is certain Gates did it. The prosecutors are already talking the death penalty, and there s nothing in the mounting evidence, and certainly not in Gates s unpersuasive denials, to convince Daley and his partner and ex wife Rosie of his innocence. But even if he s lying, it s their job to defend him, and that means finding out what really happened. Sure enough, the deeper they dig, the seamier their findings. An array of influential power brokers is all too ready to cover questionable activities that may or may not connect with the victim. There s a campaign manager with his own dirty secrets, a shady Internet entrepreneur who trades flesh for cash, a prominent businessman who uses muscle to keep his enterprise prospering. Mike and Rosie chase down trails that take them from the lowest depths of the Mission District, where drugs and bodies are always for sale, to the gated mansions of Pacific Heights, all the while contending with a trial that gets under way even as they are frantically trying to piece together what is really at stake in the case against Gates. Its riveting blend of inside knowledge, powerful suspense, courtroom intrigue, and ironic humor makes Incriminating Evidence an edge of the seat novel that will hold readers from the very first page to its startling denouement.
Criminal Intent
You can pick your friends, they say, but you can’t pick your family. And lately, Mike Daley’s family has been keeping him very busy. An ex priest, ex public defender, and ex corporate lawyer, Daley and his former wife, Rosie Fernandez, now run their own San Francisco criminal defense firm. Most of their cases are fairly small time, which is why it would be surprising that the person accused of murdering movie director Richard Big Dick MacArthur is calling them except that the accused is Rosie’s own niece, Angelina. That case is bad enough, but the family problems don’t end there: Rosie’s brother, Tony, may be on the wrong end of a strong arm graft proposal; the son of one of the firm’s lawyers has just been busted on a drug charge; Mike is having a clandestine affair with a woman judge…
and Rosie herself has a dark secret that may make all of it seem irrelevant. An intricate plot, immensely likeable characters, powerful suspense, and more than a touch of humor these have already become Siegel’s hallmarks. Criminal Intent will keep you turning pages until its final, surprising end.
Final Verdict
Fate throws a curveball at the San Francisco ex husband and wife legal team of Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez, when Mike picks up the phone and hears the voice of Leon Walker. This is not good news because Walker was the one who ruined their marriage. Years ago, he and his brother participated in a stickup that left a man dead. Through a series of some said questionable maneuvers, Mike got the charges dropped, but he and Rosie fought about it all the time and it finally drove a wedge between them. Now, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist has been found dead in a dumpster on San Francisco’s skid row. The new murder has been pinned on Walker, but he not only tells Mike he is innocent, he says he is a dying man and doesn’t want to go to his grave proclaimed a murderer. Dogged investigation, courtroom nimbleness, and a healthy dose of luck usually have helped Mike before, but it looks like it’ll take more than that to prevail this time, and his time is running out both on his client and, just maybe, on his partnership. Filled with wonderful characters and suspense and more than a touch of humor, Reasonable Doubt is, like the author’s first three books, a page turner.
The Confession
Confessions abound some of them quite unexpected in Sheldon Siegel’s new legal thriller. Mike Daley doesn’t go to confession much since he left the priesthood twenty years ago and became a lawyer, but that doesn’t stop his old friend, Father Ramon Aguirre, from trying to get him there. ‘It wouldn’t kill you to go to church once in a while,’ he tells Mike. But it does kill someone. For several months, a ruinous sexual harassment suit has been building against the San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese, and when the plaintiff’s lawyer is found dead, an apparent suicide, an almost audible sigh of relief is heard in certain quarters. But that is before the police find evidence of murder. Even worse the evidence points to Father Aguirre. Mike and his ex wife law partner, Rosie, jump in to take the priest’s case, but what started out as difficult soon appears impossible as forensics, witnesses, and secrets from Father Aguirre’s past all incriminate their client. Soon, their wits are the only things keeping the priest from a life sentence or worse, and wits simply may not be enough unless they can conjure up a miracle of their own. Of Siegel’s most recent book, Publishers Weekly said, ‘The verdict is clear; another win for Siegel.’ And so it is again.
Judgment Day
New York Times best selling author Sheldon Siegel returns with a dramatic new case for the San Francisco law firm of Daley and Fernandez. As husband and wife, Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez couldn t make it work. Luckily for Bay Area criminals, they didn t let that stop them from joining forces to open San Francisco’s most tenacious law firm. As defense attorneys willing to take on the biggest and trickiest cases, Daley and Fernandez make one hell of team. ‘Judgment Day‘ finds the ex spouses tackling their most compelling case yet. Called in at the last minute to try to stop the execution of Nathan Fineman, a former mob lawyer convicted of murdering three people in the backroom of the notorious Golden Dragon Restaurant, Mike and Rosie must race the clock in a desperate attempt to prove their client s innocence an impossible task, given the wealth of forensic evidence pointing to his guilt. At the same time, Mike must battle his own personal demons when the reputation of his father a San Francisco cop who was one of the first officers at the Golden Dragon on the night of the murders is called into question. As the plot hurtles toward its stunning denouement, ‘Judgment Day‘ is fast approaching not only for Nate Fineman, but for Mike s father and for the law firm of Daley and Fernandez as well.
Perfect Alibi
For Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez former spouses and current law partners the stakes have never been higher. In the seventh installment of this bestselling, critically acclaimed series, the duo learn that their sixteen year old daughter’s boyfriend has been arrested on suspicion of murdering his father, a Superior Court judge. Bobby Fairchild, however, claims to have found his father s body upon returning home from a date with Grace. The police, who found Bobby at the scene of the crime holding the murder weapon, contend that his parents acrimonious divorce sent the boy over the edge. With their daughter as Bobby s only alibi, Mike and Rosie take the case and uncover a sex scandal that takes them down San Francisco s darkest alleys and into the homes of the city s most prominent citizens.
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