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Sheldon Siegel is the American New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon bestselling author of the mystery, thriller and crime fiction Mike Daley/Rosie Fernandez series.

Born in Chicago, Siegel attended the University of Illinois for his undergraduate degree, and did his law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at UC-Berkeley.

He has served as an attorney for over thirty-five years, specializing in corporate and securities law.

Siegel began writing his first book, Special Circumstances (2000), while commuting daily from Marin County to San Francisco.

His books have so far been translated into a dozen languages, selling millions of copies across the world.

Previously elected president of the Northern California chapter, Siegel is a member of the national board of directors of the Mystery Writers of America, as well as the International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime.

He currently lives in Marin County with his beloved wife, Linda, and a lovely cat named Betty.

The couple has two twin adult sons, Alan and Stephen.

More about Sheldon Siegel

Genres: Crime Suspense, Legal Thriller, Mystery, Thriller

Born: 1958

United States

Website: https://www.sheldonsiegel.com/wp/

Collections

  1. Turning the Tide (2022)

David Gold

  1. The Terrorist Next Door (2012)

Mike Daley / Rosie Fernandez

  1. Special Circumstances (2000)
  2. Incriminating Evidence (2001)
  3. Criminal Intent (2002)
  4. Final Verdict (2003)
  5. The Confession (2004)
  6. Judgment Day (2008)
  7. Perfect Alibi (2009)
  8. Felony Murder Rule (2017)
  9. Serve and Protect (2018)
  10. Hot Shot (2019)
  11. The Dreamer (2020)
  12. Final Out (2021)
  13. Last Call (2022)
  14. Double Jeopardy (2022)
  15. Dead Coin (2023)
Collections

Detailed book overview

Collections

Turning the Tide

We have a great collection of authors with a wide range of stories including action, suspense, psychological, supernatural, and mystery thrillers, as well as dark fantasy, horror, sci-fi, and urban fantasy.

Each author has contributed a complete standalone story many of which were written for this anthology and have not been previously published or have only been published in special limited editions. 

All profits will be donated to charities helping the humanitarian effort in Ukraine, with each author donating their share to the charity of their choice.

Featuring New York Times Bestselling authors Jonathan Maberry, Erica Spindler, Cheryl Bradshaw, and Sheldon Siegel. USA Today Bestselling authors Nick Thacker, D.N. Erikson, and Paul Austin Ardoin. Also Alex Bledsoe, Anthony M. Strong, C.R. Chandler, Carissa Andrews, David Berens, David J. Gatward, Dominika Best, Dwight Holing, Erik Henry Vick, Jason Parent, Jodi Burnett, John Conroe, J.S. Morin, Kevin Tumlinson, Lisa Herrington, LynDee Walker, Michael McBride, Michaelbrent Collings, Paul Heingarten, Rachel Mclean, Renee Pawlish, Ryan W. Fox, Sally Rigby, Sonya Sargent, and Stuart Jaffe.

We are not affiliated with any charities or organizations. We are authors doing what we can to help.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2022
Ebook: B09Y15HYXT
Publisher: West Street Publishing

David Gold

The Terrorist Next Door

“It isn’t over.”

It’s Homeland Security's biggest nightmare. Fire bombs detonating all around Chicago in stolen cars using untraceable cell phones.

The Islamic Freedom Federation has demanded the release of Hassan Al-Shahid, a graduate student whose plan to set off a bomb at the Art Institute was thwarted by Chicago PD Detective David Gold and his long-time partner, Detective Paul Liszewski. Their heroic efforts had cost Liszewski his life and put Gold in the hospital.

Detective Gold is still suffering from the aftereffects of his partner’s death when he receives a Medal of Valor on the steps of the Art Institute. During the ceremony, the first car bomb is detonated across the street, killing a passerby. Gold soon receives a cryptic text : "It isn't over."

It's just the beginning. Untraceable car bombs detonate at the Wrigley Field El station, Millennium Park, the Museum of Science and Industry, O'Hare, Hyde Park, and the upscale Rush Street area. Chicago PD, the FBI and Homeland Security can't trace the bomber.

The international terror channels are silent. Is the bomber a freelancer? Or part of the Islamic Freedom Federation? No one knows.

Detective Gold is a third generation native of South Chicago, the hardscrabble neighborhood of steel mills, smokestacks, and steeples near the Indiana border. He's one of Chicago's most decorated detectives. His new partner, Detective A.C. Battle is a native of Mississippi whose family moved to Chicago to escape the Jim Crow South. He grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes across the Dan Ryan Expressway from Mayor Daley's house and Comiskey Park.

As bombs continue to go off, Gold and Battle are drawn into a desperate cat-and-mouse game against a brilliant mind. From its opening scene to its stunning denouement, Siegel writes a lightning paced thriller capturing the complexity and fears of the post-9/11 world. Along the way, he provides an insider's look at Chicago's neighborhoods-from the Magnificent Mile to century-old churches where mass is still celebrated in Polish to gritty seafood shacks next to the ghostly expanses where the steel mills once stood.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2012
ISBN: 978-0983006268
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel

Mike Daley / Rosie Fernandez

Special Circumstances

Meet Mike Daley. Ex-priest. Ex–public defender. And as of yesterday, ex-partner in one of San Francisco's most prominent law firms. Today he's out on his own, setting up practice on the wrong side of town. Then his best friend and former colleague is charged with a brutal double murder, and Daley is instantly catapulted into a high-profile investigation involving the prestigious law firm that just booted him.

As he prepares his case, Daley uncovers the firm's dirtiest secrets. It doesn't take long for him to discover that in this trial, ambition, friendship, greed, and long-standing grudges will play just as important a role as truth and justice.

Brilliantly paced, crackling with energy and suspense, Special Circumstances reminds us why we love to hate lawyers — but can't get enough of courtroom drama when it's done this well.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2000
ISBN: 978-0991391202
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
Incriminating Evidence

For Mike, it's a case he can't win for a client he can't stand.

It starts with a phone call Mike Daley never expected to get.

Prentice Marshall Gates III is on the line pleading for Mike's help. Friends they're not, ever since Gates unceremoniously kicked Mike out of their prestigious law firm.

But Gates needs Daley now - badly. It seems the San Francisco’s District Attorney and chief law enforcement officer and front-runner candidate for California attorney general has just been arrested.

A couple of hours earlier he woke up in his hotel room and found the dead body of a young prostitute in his bed. Prosecutors are already talking the death penalty, and there’s nothing in the mounting evidence to convince Daley and his partner Rosie Fernandez of Gates’s innocence. But even if he’s lying, it’s now their job to defend him.

Sure enough, the deeper Mike and Rosie dig, the seamier their findings.

From a shady Internet entrepreneur who trades flesh for cash to a prominent businessman who uses muscle to keep his enterprise prospering,

Mike and Rosie chase down leads that take them from the depths of the Mission District, where drugs and bodies are always for sale, to the gated mansions of Pacific Heights, frantically trying to piece together the shocking truth of what actually happened, even as the trial itself is under way.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2001
ISBN: 978-0991391226
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
Criminal Intent

You can pick your friends, 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. But things get personal when the accused is Rosie's own niece, Angelina.

And the family drama doesn'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.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2002
ISBN: 978-0988265479
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
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.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2003
ISBN: 978-0988265424
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
The Confession

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.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2004
ISBN: 978-0988265431
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
Judgment Day

As husband and wife, Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez couldn’t make it work. But as partners in one of San Francisco’s most tenacious law firms, Daley and Fernandez make one hell of a team.

Judgment Day finds the ex-spouses tackling their most difficult 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 back room of Chinatown’s notorious Golden Dragon Restaurant, Mike and Rosie must race the clock in a desperate attempt to prove their client’s innocence.

With only ten days to go and a wealth of forensic evidence pointing overwhelmingly to Fineman’s guilt, their task seems impossible. Complicating matters, Mike must battle his own personal demons when the reputation of his dead father—a San Francisco cop who was one of the first officers at the scene the night of the murders—is called into question.

And as the plot hurtles toward its stunning denouement, judgment day is fast approaching not only for Nate Fineman, but for Mike’s father and the law firm of Daley and Fernandez as well.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2008
ISBN: 978-0988265455
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
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 (Perfect) Alibi, Mike and Rosie take the case that takes them down San Francisco’s darkest alleys and into the homes of some of the city’s most prominent citizens.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2009
ISBN: 978-0988265462
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
Felony Murder Rule

Mike and Rosie are now the co-heads of the Felony Division, where they spend more time running the office and supervising younger attorneys than trying cases. That changes quickly when Mike is visited by Melinda Nguyen, whose son, Thomas, a high school senior, is about to go on trial for murder.

Thomas has been arrested under California’s archaic “felony murder rule,” which says you can be can be convicted of first degree murder if you’re present when someone is killed during the course of a felony, even if you don’t pull the trigger.

The charge against Thomas shows the absurd limits of this legal doctrine. He was sitting outside in the car when a friend entered a liquor store in San Francisco’s teeming Tenderloin District and allegedly flashed a gun. The shopkeeper pulled out an AR-15 and calmly filled the alleged robber’s chest with bullets. Thomas is charged with murder even though he never entered the store.

Thomas fires his original lawyer on the eve of trial after she recommends acceptance of a plea bargain. With nowhere else to turn, his mother petitions for help from the Public Defender’s Office, and Mike agrees to handle the trial scheduled to start four days later.

As the evidence mounts against Thomas, it tests Mike and Rosie’s legal skills and relationship. Their stress is compounded by the fact that Thomas and his mother may have a connection to Mike’s older brother, Tommy, who died in Vietnam forty years earlier.

Aided by Mike’s brother, Pete, a private investigator, and Rosie’s niece, Rolanda, a top-notch young attorney at the P.D.’s Office, Mike and Rosie face their most compelling challenge yet as they race to represent their client and try to find closure for old wounds.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2017
ISBN: 978-0991391295
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
Serve and Protect

Ex-spouses Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez have come a long way from their days as small-time defense attorneys. Rosie is now San Francisco’s Public Defender, and Mike is the head of the Felony Division. Their daughter is in college. Their son is in middle school. For the first time in years, there is a semblance of order in their lives.

It doesn’t last long.

Johnny Bacigalupi is a rookie police officer and fourth-generation cop who graduated at the top of his class at St. Ignatius High, USF, and the Police Academy. His father is an assistant chief. He’s also Mike’s godson.

On a rainy night, Johnny and his partner pull over a Honda with a broken tail light. Juwon Jones has an outstanding probation violation. When asked to exit his car, Jones bangs the door into Johnny and flees. Johnny corners Jones in a nearby parking lot, where Jones raises his hands. Shots ring out and Jones is dead. Was it a rookie mistake? Self-defense?

A gun is found under the body—did it belong to Jones? Was it planted? No weapon is visible in footage from Johnny’s body cam or video taken by other officers. Yet Johnny and the other cops insist that Johnny acted in self-defense. The evidence suggests otherwise. Rioters are demanding justice. The D.A. charges Johnny with first-degree murder.

Meanwhile, San Francisco is besieged. Local TV, cable news, Twitter, and social media explode. Police supporters clash with Black Lives Matter. White supremacists come to San Francisco looking for trouble—and find it.

Mike and Rosie avoid the fray until Johnny’s family asks Mike to represent his godson. Despite Rosie’s reservations, Mike takes a leave of absence and represents Johnny, with help from his former-cop-turned-private-investigator brother, Pete.

Mike, Rosie, and Pete face their biggest challenge yet in a high-stakes case where San Francisco’s streets turn violent.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2018
ISBN: 978-0999674710
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
Hot Shot

Lexy Low's sugar daddy Jeff King dies as she injects him with heroin. Was it an accident? Murder? Bad smack?

It starts with a phone call on Christmas Eve. Jeff King, the founder of Silicon Valley’s hottest tech startup, was found dead in his mansion above Mission Dolores on San Francisco’s “Billionaires Row.” Lexy Low, a young woman he had met on a “sugar daddy” site, allegedly injected King with a lethal “hot shot” of heroin.

Or did she? Was it an accident? Or murder? In the tenth installment of New York Times bestselling author Sheldon Siegel’s iconic San Francisco series, it’s up to ex-spouses and Public Defenders Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez to find the truth.

King’s company, Y5K Technologies, is on the cusp of a widely anticipated IPO. In the media, King was portrayed as a visionary and a dedicated husband and father. In reality, Y5K had paid millions in to settle multiple sexual harassment claims. He was also a regular heroin user and frequent visitor to a popular strip club in San Francisco’s trendy South of Market neighborhood.

Lexy is a former wunderkind programmer for one of Silicon Valley’s most successful tech companies. She loses her job when she rebuffs the advances of her supervisor. Her life spirals downward after she becomes addicted to anti-depressants, pain-killers, and, ultimately, heroin. Unemployed and homeless, she supports her habit by hooking up with King using the nom de plume “Sexy Lexy.”

On a rainy night, King invites his senior management team, venture capitalists, and several young women to a party at his house. He also invites Lexy for an after-party. After the other guests leave, King and Lexy rendezvous in King’s bedroom, where Lexy injects King with high-powered heroin.

Lexy claims that King provided the heroin. King’s people claim that Lexy brought it. The members of management—who detested King—used the bathroom where Lexy allegedly found the heroin. Did King leave it there? Did somebody from management? Or did Lexy bring it herself?

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2019
ISBN: 978-0999674734
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
The Dreamer

The chef's knife was in the wrong place...wedged deep in the gut of celebrity chef Carlos Cruz.

San Francisco's hottest young chef rose from modest beginnings to getting a James Beard Award for his upscale Mission District eatery, El Conquistador. In addition to creating cutting-edge cuisine, the mercurial Cruz has been accused of sexual harassment multiple times.

When Mercedes "Mercy" Tejada finds her boss dying in the alley behind his trendy bistro, she knows she's in a lot of trouble. The waitress job wasn't ideal, but the tips paid the bills. Smart, ambitious, and tenacious, Mercy was granted Dreamer status while studying to become a nurse.

With the bloody discovery, Mercy realizes she could lose it all. And not just for her -- her entire family is at risk too.

Ex-spouses and Public Defenders Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez are thrust into this politically charged case where they must battle the District Attorney, the immigration authorities, the political establishment, old family secrets, and each other in a desperate search for the truth.

The case is personal. Mercy's mom, Perlita, is the longtime housekeeper for Rosie's mother, Sylvia. It is Sylvia who asks Rosie and Mike to handle Mercy's case. There are political ramifications as well. Rosie is running for re-election as Public Defender. Her decision to handle a dreamer's defense herself will not play well to a portion of the electorate.

As Mercy's case hurtles toward trial, Rosie, Mike, and Mike's brother/private investigator, Pete, race between the tenements, trendy restaurants, and century-old churches of the Mission District in a desperate search for an elusive truth where everybody--including Mike and Rosie and their families--has something to hide.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2020
ISBN: 978-0999674772
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
Final Out

A ballpark. A bay. A body.

Robbie Blum was San Francisco’s most prominent sports agent. His clients included players on the Giants, Warriors, and Niners. It all came crashing down when his body was found floating in San Francisco Bay after a Giants game, his skull crushed. A Louisville Slugger floating next to his body.

Though Blum was a wildly successful agent, his personal life was a disaster. Two failed marriages. Allegations of spousal abuse. Alcohol. Drugs. Gambling. Even his biggest client, Giants’ slugger David Archer, had reservations about Blum’s erratic behavior.

Jaylen Jenkins is a native of Oakland (“before it was woke,” as he likes to say). The graduate of McClymonds High School ekes out a living and pays for his mother’s drug rehab by working at fast-food restaurants, driving for Uber, and selling Giants T-shirts outside the ballpark. Jaylen also ran errands for Blum—and it was more than getting his laundry. Jenkins picked up illegal drugs for Blum from a supplier at a strip club. Blum also provided Jaylen with Giants swag to sell behind the ballpark.

On the night that he died, Blum met with Jaylen at his stand and gave money to Jaylen to deliver to Blum’s drug supplier. Blum also had an autographed bat that he was going to give to his son. According to the police, Jaylen attacked Blum and killed him. Jaylen appears on a security video with a bat in hand.

Ex-spouses and Public Defenders Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez defend Jaylen in a high-profile case where they race from the glamorous world of professional sports to the low-rent world of strip clubs and homeless encampments in a desperate search for an elusive truth where everybody has something to hide.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2021
ISBN: 978-1952612022
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
Last Call

A bar. A body. A bloody knife.

Mike wasn’t expecting the early-morning call from his 86-year-old uncle. Big John Dunleavy arrived at his namesake bar to find the body of San Francisco police officer Eddie Corcoran in the alley, a bloody knife at his side.

Corcoran was a tough cop whose life went off the rails after his partner was killed two years earlier. Infidelity and alcohol abuse led his wife to file for divorce. Excessive force and harassment while arresting drug dealers and the homeless resulted in his recent suspension from the force. Corcoran was on the verge of permanently losing his job, custody of his children and everything. He didn’t think he’d lose his life.

All signs point to Big John’s grandson Joey as the killer. Witnesses reported that Joey and the cop argued at the bar shortly before last call. The alleged murder weapon is Joey’s Boy Scout knife. The only fingerprints are his.

Big John begs Mike to represent Joey. Mike and his team of ex-wife/boss (Rosie) and brother/P.I. (Pete) embark on a desperate search for the truth that takes them around San Francisco -- from the foggy streets of the Sunset to the colorful corners of the Mission to the homeless encampments in Golden Gate Park to the drug-infested hotels in the Tenderloin.

Can they find justice for Joey before the bars close?

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2022
ISBN: 978-1952612077
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
Double Jeopardy

He was just trying to help a friend.

After three tours in Afghanistan, homeless and hooked on painkillers, Lenny was working to pull his life together. He gave Annie the last of his oxy pills to ease the pain from her shoulder injury. But when she was found dead in her tent the next morning, Lenny wound up in jail accused of killing her with fentanyl.

After a year behind bars, Lenny was finally about to get his day in court. But the uncertainty of the coronavirus threatened to delay his justice further.

The evidence is compelling: a pill bottle with Lenny’s name, fingerprints, and DNA is found in the tent of the decedent, Annie Parker. There are six pills laced with fentanyl inside the bottle. Lenny insists he’s innocent. He claims he gave Annie three of his legitimate OxyContin pills that he got from the V.A. 

When Lenny’s public defender is called away to help a family member sick with COVID, Mike Daley steps in to take over his case. Contrary to Mike’s advice, Lenny rejects a continuance leaving Mike little time to prepare for trial.

With the City on the verge of closing down, Mike must fly solo at trial as he desperately searches for witnesses in the homeless encampments and the drug-infested hotels in the Tenderloin.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2022
ISBN: 978-1952612114
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel
Dead Coin

Deal Coin is dead. So is Tyson Gore -- the crypto company's rockstar CEO.

Homeless addict Reggie Jones stands accused of his murder during a botched robbery in the heart of Salesforce Park.

San Francisco Public Defenders Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez race against time to uncover the truth.

From gleaming office towers to powerful venture capital firms on Sandhill Road to tawdry strip clubs catering to Silicon Valley's elite, they follow a trail of betrayal, greed, and corruption.

Author: Sheldon Siegel
First Release: 2023
ISBN: 978-1952612169
Publisher: Sheldon M. Siegel