BREACH OF TRUST

A Baltimore lawyer who's been tight with a local mobster for most of his life finds the bond getting a bit too tight when his cop brother is killed and police go after the mobster: a seventh novel from defense attorney Pairo (One Dead Judge 1993, etc.). When Harry Walsh was only ten, his father took a bullet intended for his client Sam Giardino, head of a buy-American PAC and miscellaneous other off-the-books interests. Ever since then, Giardino's had a paternal eye on his old consigliere's son, paying for Harry's college and law school and sending him a stream of questionable clients. When Harry finds out about the shooting of his brother Tucker, a cop who hasn't spoken to dirty Harry for years, he's sure it won't be long before he starts getting grief from Tucker's surviving colleaguesand he's right. But even as Lt. Frank Trammell pulls in Ronald Showels, a scruffy financial broker he says was hired by Giardino for the job, Showels and Giardino are both protesting their innocence. Then Tucker's widow, Connie, is busted for passing counterfeit money, and the case, along with Harry's life, blows sky-high. He races around, talking with Showels's clueless lawyer in order to find out what the cops have on Showels (and Giardino); with Connie, to find out what she knows about the funny money; with Tucker's rebellious kids, to mend family fences that were never in great shape (Tucker's daughter confides that her father finally relaxed when he started sleeping with teenagers); and with Giardino, who seems to be amusing himself on the side by arranging a fat contract for the interior-design firm of Harry's ambitious girlfriend. Is anyone on the level? There'll be two more murders and a million protestations of innocencelegal, moral, factualbefore the anticlimactic roundup. A meaty, satisfying case, with professional work from all hands.