Overview
Joseph Antonelli, the fictional creation of acclaimed author D. W. Buffa, has gained a loyal following among both readers and critics as he challenges the criminal justice system in novels like The Judgment. Now the charismatic attorney heads to the legal battlegrounds of San Francisco and a cast of characters that includes national powerbrokers and international spies.
THE LEGACY
On a San Francisco street dark and dense with fog, somebody has shot and killed United States Senator Jeremy Fullerton in the front seat of his car. The police arrest Jamaal Washington, a young black man. The case is a career maker, but no attorney in the Bay Area will touch it because of its explosive nature. Which is exactly why outsider Joseph Antonelli leaves the comfort of his Portland, Oregon, practice and heads for "The City" to take on Jamaal's defense. Working for Antonelli are two advantages: His client is a clean-cut pre-med honor student at Berkeley; and the dead senator's many enemies don't mourn—they even welcome—his passing. Working against him is one glaring, seemingly overpowering fact: the inability of the defendant to explain why he was caught with the murder weapon right next to his hand as he lay unconscious, shot in the back as he fled from the scene of the crime.
Mounting his defense, Antonelli will navigate a terrain ruled by backroom politics and old-world money, a realm of men with power and of women with wealth and influence using each other with no thought to the consequences. He will unravel a frightening chain of espionage, betrayal, and violent assassination that spirals far beyond the brute simplicities of a common street crime. And, determined to win his case and prevail in an unforgiving world, he will face the most personal, most dangerous peril of all, the hazard of becoming a man exactly like Senator Jeremy Fullerton himself, one who knows everyone's secrets and tells everyone lies.
Written with unwavering authenticity and propelled by hypnotic plotting, THE LEGACY makes D. W. Buffa an author to remember.
Synopsis
Lone wolf lawyer Joseph Antonelli takes the case of a black man accused of murdering a senator in San Francisco. Antonelli soon finds himself in a world ruled by backroom politics and naked ambition—and learns just how much one person will risk in order to leave behind a legacy.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
A former defense lawyer, D. W. Buffa has earned a reputation for writing taut courtroom dramas -- such as The Judgment, his 2001 Edgar nominee for Best Novel -- marked by a highly effective use of realistic legal maneuvers and litigation tactics to produce tension. In The Legacy, he once again thrusts his protagonist, Portland attorney Joseph Antonelli, into an absorbing, complex case, one that will lead to terrifying revelations and a trail of corruption, old world money, destroyed innocence, and plenty of dirty politics.
Jeremy Fullerton, a California senator with presidential ambitions, is shot in the front seat of his car after giving a fiery speech. Jamal Washington, a young black medical student, is arrested fleeing the scene and charged with murder despite his protests that he was only trying to aid the dying senator. Enter Antonelli, who is willing to stake his reputation -- and possibly his life -- to clear Washington in a case that is bound to uncover secrets a lot of powerful people would prefer to leave buried. Eventually Antonelli tracks the intricate machinations behind the murder to a grand conspiracy in Italy, where the outcome is something completely unexpected.
Buffa uses a sure and steady hand to tell an elaborate tale that moves from the modern-day courts back to a cabal formed decades earlier. Thought-provoking and filled with intricate twists, The Legacy offers fleshed-out characters and a fulfilling story that digs deep into the very ideals of our judicial and political systems. (Tom Piccirilli)