This is one of the books I got in a paperback sale of a set of books for beach reading seller selected. This book was released in 1990, but the corruption described is still around 2 decades later, wherever there are rich people who think they can modify activity by spreading their money around to achieve their desired end.
In this book, we are introduced to Judge Rachel Williams, who has a strong affiliation with the letter of the law and applying it to whatever cases come to her court. She has finally achieved the status of a judge in the Superior Court on step off her goal of getting to be a judge on the Supreme Court in her state, which in this story is California. Know the setting of the story is California, makes it much easier to understand the deep-set influence money has on everything, despite the fancy words used to state otherwise.
Shortly after her being robed as a Judge in the Superior Court, she is assigned the case involving the murder of a young girl, Jenny Creighton, who was the girlfriend of the accused, George Moore. Her body was found with 37 knife cuts which caused her death at the home George lived in by the pool area, with George in a drug-enhanced stupor unable to remember anything that happened. It looks like a clear-cut case of murder, but behind the facts presented is a hidden secret involving the father, who went to a man named Gareth, owner of an exclusive club for help in keeping the truth hidden and getting his son off the hook, even if he has to sacrifice his only son spending time in prison for some time. Gareth gets a former defense lawyer member, Parker Jergensen, to take the case by a subtle threat to expose his nephew's drug habit. Unfortunately, for Gareth, Parker knows exactly how to clear his client, by doing his proper due-process investigation, which exposes the truth that Samuel Moore, the father doesn't want to be exposed. It all comes to a head, at a party at the club when all the people Gareth tried to use and abuse escape the fire set by the Samuel Moore who was reacting to what he thought was blackmail.
The main characters find a just ending but corruption will continue as long as people can get away with it.