After a successful run of five novels (starting with 1983's A Dime to Dance By), Walter Walker took a two-decade hiatus from writing to build his San Francisco law firm. Now, with Crime of Privilege, he's back, his legal know-how focused on the power of the wealthy to protect themselves from laws that routinely punish those less connected. His target: a Massachusetts senator whose legacy of wealth and influence insulate his family from the consequences of their profligacy, alcohol-fueled rapes and murder.
The senator's nemesis is George Becket, a divorced, low-level assistant district attorney in Cape Cod. His life took a critical turn when he witnessed two members of Senator Gregory's family at a Palm Beach blowout molesting a drunken teen socialite. He was persuaded not to say anything about it, and he's regretted his silence ever since. Now he coasts at his job, eating his dinners alone at the local tavern. Then Bill Telford takes a barstool next to him and tells the story of his daughter's murder nine years earlier. He claims she was killed at a party at the Gregory family's compound--which the police and district attorney's office conveniently didn't investigate.
Telford's urgent plea rouses Becket from his lethargy, and the investigation takes him across the world to wherever the Gregory's hush money has hidden potential witnesses. Walker manages the entangled plot with sure-footed writing and more than a touch of irony--and if the fictional senator and his family sound familiar, well, so be it. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.