In Wolf's Revenge, the fifth novel in Lachlan Smith's Shamus Award-winning series, attorney-detective Leo Maxwell seeks an exit strategy from his family's deepening entanglement with a ruthless prison-based gang. Caught between the criminals and the FBI, Leo charts his own path in defending a young woman who was manipulated into brazenly murdering a member of the Aryan Brotherhood in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. When the consequences strike heartbreakingly close to home, Leo, his brother Teddy, and the rest of the family are forced into a winner-takes-all confrontation with men who don't care how many innocents they harm in achieving their goals. As Leo's world collapses, long-held secrets are revealed, transforming his perspective on the aftermath of the tragedy that derailed his childhood and fractured his family twenty-one years ago. Leo comes to realize there's no such thing as fair play in the battle against a prison gang that's already being punished to the full extent of the law. The question then becomes who will get revenge first-the Maxwells or the sadistic gang leader who pursues them?
After working to free his father from prison, Leo has left private practice and is working as a public defender. He and his co-counsel Jordan Walker are in the midst of a trial, defending Randall Rodriguez, a mentally ill homeless man whom they contend falsely confessed to the rape of a young San Francisco socialite. After their client is acquitted, Leo and Jordan fall into an intense relationship-until Jordan is found brutally raped and murdered in her apartment. Leo, the last person known to have seen her alive, is the natural suspect, and the police are eager for payback after the Rodriguez case. The story takes a turn when Leo and Jordan's freshly acquitted client goes to the police station and offers to confess to Jordan's murder. Upset by the rapidity with which the police accept this confession, Jordan's father asks Leo to investigate his daughter's death. Leo agrees, knowing exonerating Rodriguez will bring suspicion back on himself. Theorizing that he may be on the trail of a serial rapist and murderer, Leo instead uncovers a massive judicial fraud leading to the federal courthouse. Leo will come face to face with an adversary more powerful than any foe he has met so far.
Faced with evidence of stunning prosecutorial misconduct, a San Francisco judge has ordered a new trial for the Maxwell brothers’ father, Lawrence, who was convicted of killing their mother twenty-one years before. A prison snitch soon turns up dead, with Lawrence the only suspect, and Leo teams up with hotshot attorney Nina Schuyler to defend Lawrence against murder charges both old and new. Working the streets while Nina handles the action in the courtroom, Leo is forced to confront the darkness at the center of his life as he follows a trail of corruption and danger that leads to the very steps of
City Hall.
Everything seems backwards with this case: a lawyer falls victim to a crime, the police seem to be advocating for the wrong side of the law, and young attorney Leo Maxwell is forced to do an investigator's job in pursuit of the man who tried to kill his brother.
Leo had been raised by his older brother, Teddy, a top criminal lawyer both renowned and notorious for his talent and ruthlessness. Though different in character and viewpoint, Leo always tried to emulate Teddy, striving to be recognized by his brother as a fellow lawyer in his own right.
The two are at lunch when Teddy, supposed to give the closing argument of his current trial that afternoon, is shot, in public, in the middle of the bar. But the shooter escapes without Leo catching even a glimpse of him. While Teddy lies in a coma, Leo searches for the shooter, soon realizing that the list of possible suspects is much larger than he could have possibly imagined.
