Opening paragraph.....................

     To put the Wade/Nichols case in some kind of perspective:  it may have been the toughest one I've ever handled in my professional life of more than thirty years, and it wasn't even criminal.  I do criminal.  My name is Jerry Kennedy and I don't take civil cases.  This is widely known - I have made it so.  I refer civil matters out to civil lawyers, who very kindly don't do criminal and therefore thoughtfully refer such nasty stuff to me.  I am not myself uncivil, or try not to be, at least;  I just prefer to play it smart, which means: do what I'm used to doing, and therefore know how to do well - well enough at a minimum to convince civilians watching that I do know what I am doing.  So far, that's been good enough.  That may be criminal, but it's not forbidden by law.  So:  why did I take the mixed-breed Wade/Nichols case, the hardest case I never tried?  Which looked like it was civil but was really criminal?  And, when you came right down to it, de facto made me into what I'd never been before in my whole life, a fucking prosecutor?
-George V. Higgins,  Sandra Nichols Found Dead