Her Deadly Game

Her Deadly Game by Robert Dugoni is a legal thriller that was originally published in 2023. It is the first novel in Dugoni’s Keera Duggan series, which features criminal defense attorney Keera Duggan. Although former prosecutor Keera reluctantly joined the family firm founded by her father, Patsy Duggan, she proves indispensable in the high-profile LaRussa murder case, using her skills as a former competitive chess player and showcasing her use of Chess Strategy in Law and Life. While the investigation and case are building, Keera grapples with reconnecting with her father and Finding One’s Place in the Family. The novel also explores The Intersection of Wealth, Status, and Morality as secrets about Keera’s client complicate the case.

This guide refers to the e-book version of the text, published in 2023 by Thomas & Mercer.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide include discussions of alcohol use disorder, child abuse, murder, death by suicide, stalking, and psychological manipulation.

Plot Summary

When a relationship with fellow prosecutor Miller Ambrose goes bad, Keera Duggan leaves the state prosecutor’s office and joins her family’s criminal defense firm with her father, Patsy, and her two older sisters, Ella and Maggie. Patsy founded the firm 40 years prior and is famous in Seattle for his aggressive style. Lately, however, he has been slowing down, and everyone is worried about the future of the firm, which depends on Patsy’s skill in the courtroom.

When the novel opens, Keera is in the courtroom, defending a drunk driving charge and waiting for her father to return from lunch. When he never does, she takes control and wins the case, but she knows that Patsy got drunk at lunch. When Keera gets back to the office, she, Ella, and Maggie argue about the fact that her sisters had to find Patsy and bring him home.

Keera’s resentment of this situation is one reason she doesn’t tell her family when she receives a call later that night from Vince LaRussa, who is seeking defense for the murder of his wife, Anne. Keera takes the case, and the next day, she convinces Patsy to let her take the lead, even though she’s never tried a murder case. They all know that the trial will be high profile, as Vince and Anne were part of affluent Seattle society. Keera needs Patsy in second chair but makes him promise to maintain his sobriety for the duration of the trial.

Anne’s death is difficult to explain—both the police investigation and Keera’s own investigation are unable to make sense of strange clues. While preparing for the trial and conducting her investigation, Keera starts receiving emails from someone named Jack Worthing, who gives her names from Vince’s past. By tracking down the people Jack identifies, Keera’s perspective on Vince begins to shift as she forms a portrait of a man who cares only for money and is willing to lie and steal to get it. However, questions remain surrounding Jack’s identity and what he hopes to gain. At times, Keera wonders if Jack is meant to distract her from the truth about Anne’s death.

Meanwhile, Keera’s investigator, Harrison, is still trying to figure out what happened when Anne was killed. He finds a few clues that the police missed: a burn mark on the oven door and potassium nitrate and cotton fibers in a puddle of water. Neither he nor Keera believe that Vince killed Anne—the evidence doesn’t seem to support it—but their inability to develop an alternate theory isn’t going to play well in court. Vince tells Keera that Anne gardened, and she and Harrison find stump remover in the garden shed, which could be the source of the potassium nitrate. While some of the pieces begin to come together, neither they nor the police are able to develop a theory that accounts for everything.

While they continue to investigate, the trial is playing out in court every day as Ambrose, the case’s prosecutor and Keera’s former boss and boyfriend, antagonizes and obstructs Keera. To outsmart Ambrose, she adopts a strategy of pretending to believe in a weak theory that Anne’s best friend, Lisa, is the killer. She uses the chess strategy that Patsy taught her to guide her courtroom strategy and decides to wait, allow her opponent to underestimate her, and be ready to shift strategies as new information is revealed.

Keera’s big break comes with the revelation that Anne had stage-four cancer, a fact that the prosecutor deliberately removed from the medical examiner’s report. With this shift in perspective, a new theory suddenly falls into place: With Lisa’s help, Anne died by suicide. Keera posits that the cotton fibers and potassium nitrate in the puddle are the remnants of a fuse, part of a complex method that allowed Anne, who had rheumatoid arthritis, to fire the gun.

The only problem is that the trial is due to end the very day Keera and Harrison put this theory together. Keera could put him on the stand to testify, but they know that something so complicated would be best explained through a video reconstruction. Keera stalls for time, but as the day goes on, it becomes clear that Harrison won’t be able to finish in time. Patsy appears in the courtroom, pretending to be drunk, which delays the trial one more day. Keera worries about damage to his reputation, but Patsy decides to step back from trial now that he knows Keera can handle it.

After the revelation that the prosecutor manipulated the examiner’s report and the success of Harrison’s video reconstruction, Vince is found not guilty. Keera congratulates him, knowing that he didn’t kill Anne, but still feels that something is wrong. She realizes that Jack Worthing is actually Lisa, tasked with sending the emails to frame Vince for Anne’s death, but Keera doesn’t understand why.

Lisa tells Keera that Anne had discovered secrets about Vince’s past that caused her to do more digging. They had discovered that Vince’s wealth management firm was a Ponzi scheme and that he killed a man to cover up his crimes. Anne didn’t think the police would believe her and didn’t have long to live, so she created a plan to die by suicide and frame Vince to punish him for his other crimes. Lisa passed along her and Anne’s discoveries to Keera through the Jack Worthing emails.

After this all comes out, Vince tries to run. Keera goes to Lisa’s house, knowing that Vince will try to hurt her. When she arrives, she finds a trail of blood that leads to Vince, dead on the floor. Lisa shot him after he broke in. Keera’s high-profile win, coupled with the notoriety of Vince’s death, creates more business for the firm than they can handle. Lisa hires Keera to defend her in her trials for Vince’s death and assisting in Anne’s suicide. Keera assumes her father’s duties and establishes her credibility through her work on the LaRussa case, ensuring the future success of the family firm.