Baltimore, 2006. A deputy mayor is dead. An eighteen-year-old sits in county lockup with the wrong prints on the wrong gun. And the only lawyer willing to take the case just inherited it from the father who died on the courthouse steps. Shawn Davidson walked away from his father's firm two years ago. He swore he was done with the city, done with the name, done with the kind of law that buries the truth instead of arguing it. Then Leo Davidson collapsed on the marble of Mitchell Courthouse and left his son one final file - a murder trial, a defendant nobody else will touch, and a paper trail that points everywhere except where it should. Detective Phil Han runs a parallel case the brass don't want closed. Investigative reporter Jordan Grey chases a byline that could cost him his career - or his life. And in a high-rise above the harbor, Mayor Charles Dawson watches a model of a development that hasn't been built yet, deciding how to handle a problem named Davidson. CONTEMPT is the first novel in the Civic Noir Universe - a seven-book saga of inheritance, justice, and the cost of carrying a name in a city that remembers everything. For readers of S.A. Cosby, Attica Locke, and the world of The Wire.