"A novel" - cover.

Katie Chase, wife of Hal Chase--a guard in the San Francisco County Jail--has disappeared. By the time Dismas Hardy hears about it, Katie has been missing for five days. The case has become a suspected homicide, and Hal is the prime suspect. He wants Hardy as his defense lawyer. Hardy calls on his friend, former homicide detective Abe Glitsky, to identify other possible suspects, and there is no shortage of them. As Glitsky probes further, he learns of questionable inmate deaths at the county jail. When Katies body is found, Homicide arrests Hal and he finds himself an inmate in the very jail where he used to work, a place full of secrets he knows well.