It was part street theater, part civil  disobedience, and pure Berkeley: Someone was waging  guerrilla warfare on the city's meter maids and their  beloved parking meters. But when the prankster took  detective Jill Smith and her colleagues on a wild  chase into a deep, overgrown ravine, the game led  to murder. The dead woman was Madeleine Riordan.  A firebrand attorney who was not above an act of  civil disobedience herself, Madeleine spent her  last days in a nursing home that was perched on the  edge of a ravine. Praying into the extraordinary  life and times of Madeleine Riordan, Jill  discovered a strange connection between the meter capers  and the frail, cancer stricken woman who had once  been an unyielding defender of individual liberties.  And then Jill found something else: a crime  Madelene had witnessed, and died trying to stop. .  . -- From Amazon.com Product Description