The Duty of Candor: Kate Malloy, #3

She can prove her client is innocent. She cannot say who is guilty.

Chicago defense attorney Kate Malloy takes the appointment the way she takes them all — a name, a charge, a file. Marcus Webb, bartender, accused of strangling a journalist in an alley off Randolph. Eight weeks to trial. Nothing about it looks unusual.

Then a reservation record surfaces with a name on it, and the name belongs to her own firm's most valuable client.

Rachel Mays had been writing about public money that moved without anyone voting on it. She never filed the story. Eight pages of it exist, and Kate has them, and the man they point to has sat across a conference table from her eleven times in four years.

Every rule Kate has practiced under for eighteen years now points the same direction: say nothing. Confidentiality doesn't end when a case closes. It doesn't care whether the information is secret. It doesn't care that a man in Cook County jail is going to prison for someone else's night.

She can win Marcus Webb's trial. Winning it changes nothing about who killed Rachel Mays.

To do anything more, Kate will have to find a way through her own profession's oldest obligation — or find out what it costs to go around it. Her partnership, her license, and the two people who trusted her enough to tell her the truth are all inside the same eight weeks.

The Rule of Silence is the first Kate Malloy novel: a legal thriller for readers who want the courtroom mechanics right and the people in it real. No serial killers, no conspiracies, no lawyer who breaks the rules and gets away with it — just a competent woman, a working practice on Jackson Street, and a question with no clean answer.

Book One of the Kate Malloy series. Followed by The Privilege.