The pieces on a chess board are black and white, but Robert Dugoni grays the game by taking us into the mind and motivation of attorney Keera Duggan in the first of his new legal thriller series, “Her Deadly Game” (Thomas & Mercer).

Duggan is a generational lawyer: Her father, Patsy “the Irish Brawler” Duggan, has made a legendary reputation in Seattle’s criminal defense arena. Here he welcomes his daughter into the family firm after Keera leaves the DA’s office following a disastrous romantic relationship with a senior colleague.

But the Duggan firm of today is not the firm of old. Tarnished by Patsy’s alcoholism, the practice now only fields low-level criminal cases — something that Keera plans to change. The high-profile murder defense of multimillionaire money manager Vince LaRussa presents a chance for the firm — and her father — to rebuild their luster, if Keera can convince the client that she and the Irish Brawler are up to the game. And that’s actually doable because that’s a game Keera excels at — as a former child chess prodigy, she has a strategic mind and competitive stubbornness — and she’s able earn LaRussa’s trust.

All is not initially well, though, and after an embarrassing court appearance on another case, Keera elicits a promise from Patsy that he’ll give up alcohol for the duration of LaRussa’s trial. That’s a promise he’s made before, so it’s an act of faith of Keera and her sisters, who also work at the family practice, that they take him at his word. That’s harder for Keera than Ella and Maggie because of the closer relationship she had with her father while growing up. Yet she has come to realize that her inherited genes include not only the law, but alcoholism, so she’s willing to take a last chance on the person she also sees in herself.

Complicating all of this is the murder case before them. LaRussa is accused of killing his disabled trust-fund wife. Although the evidence seems to indicate that he isn’t the killer, money and an impending divorce are motives enough for the prosecuting attorney — the man who just happens to have been Keera’s misguided love interest — and the DA’s office is determined not only to win, but extract personal revenge on Kerra by doing so.

Shades of gray deepen as the story develops when mysterious and leading emails, a vengeful prosecutor and LaRussa’s questionable past conspire to derail the defense’s case.

Dugoni does the yeoman’s work in keeping the offense two moves ahead of Keera and Patsy — all’s fair in love and the courtroom — but where the story most shines is in the relationship between father and daughter.

At one point, Keera comes to realize the cyclical life she had embraced: “She was alone. Unmarried. No boyfriend. No children. She thought of Ella and Maggie, both also alone, and her two brothers and their divorces. … Kerra didn’t want her life to be like … theirs. She didn’t want to run from intimacy or blame her problems on her father’s drinking. She realize she had been doing just what her father had always done. She had been making excuses for her drinking and making poor choices.”

Working through such familial baggage, in addition to working for the defense after a career in prosecution — “You have that look,” Patsy said. … “That look young defense attorneys get when they realize the person they’re fighting so hard to get off is guilty.” — texture the story in ways remembrance of Dugoni’s popular Tracy Crosswhite series. Bringing in cross-story detectives Vic Fazzio and Del Castigliano — both of whom, like Tracy, Kerra had worked with on the prosecutorial side of the fence — is also a welcome addition to the story, making “Her Deadly Game” not so much a new series starter, but exactly what it is: a family affair.