The Inevitable Witness is the first in a new series of legal thrillers that are smart, funny, and authentic by one of the most lionized defense attorneys in Los Angeles, Ed Rucker.

Meet defense attorney Bobby Earl, who bears a remarkable resemblance to the author, although Rucker claims that his main character is an amalgam of the characteristics of many defense lawyers he has known, who is thrust into a politically-charged, near indefensible murder case involving the most talented safe cracker in the business, Sydney Seabrooke. More than coincidence led this esteemed criminal craftsman, known in the trade as “The Professor,” to a Chinese restaurant that contained an impenetrable 1950s Schwab safe with a Sargent and Greenleaf combination lock. Seconds away from the last tumbler falling into place, Seabrooke is interrupted by gunshots. Officer Terrance Michael Horgan, who inexplicably had a key to the Looh Fung Restaurant and had an interest in the same safe, lay bleeding to death in the next room.

Earl realizes that his client is a criminal but not a killer, which takes him into a world of drug trafficking, corrupt cops, corrupt lawyers, corrupt politicians, and, in almost every case, judges with political ambitions. All the elements of the most high profile TV trials are present including a young, attractive prosecutor, an older greyed prosecutor with a closet full of the same grey suits, an annoying gaggle of media types led by an obnoxious TV personality nicknamed “The Thumb,” and a lowdown, dirty jailhouse snitch.

Ed Rucker has been a criminal defense lawyer his entire career. He has represented over 200 defendants, including John Orr, a Glendale Fire Department arson investigator who was reputed to be the greatest serial arsonist in American history, a trial memorialized in Fire Lover, by Joseph Wambaugh; Laurianne Sconce, the matriarch of the family-owned Lamb Funeral Home, who was charged with having secretly harvested body parts from the deceased over several years, a trial that was the subject of the book Ashes, by James Joseph; Eddie Nash, a prominent nightclub owner, who was charged in a death penalty case, and who was portrayed in the film, Boogie Nights; and William Harris, a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, who was involved in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst.