Someone in my building left this downstairs and I picked it up and totally enjoyed it. This author has written a lot and this was my first, though the next 3 are dated prior to this one. These are murder thrillers with the private eyes and police. It doesn't hurt that they are based in S.F. Thoug...
A Plague of Secrets by John Lescroart.Maya Townsend is a wealthy (very wealthy) owner of a coffee shop.Why she needs to be an owner of the Bay Beans coffee Shop did not become apparent.Maya becomes Hardy's client after a murder takes place close to the store. It does becomes apparent that Maya te...
In The Oath by John Lescroart, multiple mysteries coalesce into a fascinating conundrum. When a “hit and run” driver hits the head of an HMO (probably one of the few occupations that would be despised more than a lawyer in our popular culture), it’s difficult to know whether the act was attempted...
Another great legal procedural from JL. Dismas by this time has won two clients freedom from murder charges and is gaining quite a bull dog reputation. But he has promised Franny that he will do no more murder cases, strictly calm boring legal issues. But Dismas's life just doesn't work that way ...
The master of the legal thriller delivers a brilliantly suspenseful novel of deadly secrets, privileged youth, and uncertain justice...Dismas Hardy is finally on top: As a managing partner at his thriving, newly reorganized law firm, he's a rainmaker and fix-it guy for clients leery of taking the...
The best short synopsis I read online: "The pressure is on for Dismas Hardy when an abused woman is accused of killing her husband and child in cold blood. Only Dismas believes she's innocent. However, faith alone won't be enough to save her unless Dismas takes one terrifying risk to keep her ali...
Flames engulf a picturesque, renovated San Francisco Victorian in the opening pages of this mystery. The entire first chapter is a mesmerizing drama pitting the fire against wave after wave of arriving fire fighters. As the fire is contained but not yet totally extinguished, Arnie Becker, the lea...
On the heels of The Hunt Club his biggest bestseller to date�John Lescroart weaves a new story of crime and justice in San Francisco that will keep pages turning and readers guessing from start to dizzying finish. When Dr. Caryn Dryden is found floating dead in her hot tub, homicide inspector ...
JoanneSep 01, 2010Joanne rated it 4 of 5 stars falsePolice discover the body of prominent attorney Elaine Wager dead in an alley, with her killer leaning over her. Or did they? DA Sharron Pratt, who has been soft on crime and needs help if she is to be re-elected, publicly announces that the kill...
BEWARE OF SPOILERS. I DON'T HIDE OR PROMOTE MY REVIEWS. (I write them mainly for myself -- to help me remember titles, authors' names, plots. Also, once I write a review, I find it easier to pass the book along instead of hoarding.)This book is a key installment in the lore of Dis Hardy and Abe G...
Dismas Hardy is a former cop/former attorney-turned bartender. And he's quite content in this role as bartender at the Little Shamrock; it leaves him time to compete at darts. But, when Eddie Cochran, his boss's brother-in-law, apparently commits suicide and leaves his pregnant wife with no insur...
Auguste Lupa is the alias that Sherlock Holmes’ son is known by (both in this book and it’s predecessor Son of Holmes) and like Sherlock, Auguste does not tell his own story but has a chronicler to reveal his exploits, in this case the role of Watson is filled by a Frenchman named Jules Giraud. T...
They say he is the son of Sherlock Holmes...The author of The Fall and the Dismas Hardy and Wyatt Hunt series takes us to a small French town in the dark days of World War I.The “reliably excellent”* New York Times bestselling author offers an engrossing historical mystery in which the rumor is t...
The Hearing (Laura Grafton, Russell Byers): The call comes at midnight. It looks like a tragic and petty murder - a rising star in San Francisco's legal firmament found shot in a dark alley. But for homicide lieutenant Abe Glitsky, the crime cuts horribly close to home - unknown to anyone, the vi...
The silence was complete. Not a bird chirped. Even the chickens had settled to roost. The air hung heavy with unreleased rain, charged with static electricity. It smelled metallic outside. Here and there the house was streaked with a murky blue where the stucco had run from the previous rains—a b...
When Hardy was at court, he’d often stop into the place for some kind of lunch or a drink at the end of the day. Lou the Greek had married a Chinese woman, and every day she would put together her own version of California Asian cuisine. All over the city, celebrity chefs were making their repu...
Strout was by no means where the first day of testimony had ended. They’d been back from the lunch recess only twenty-five or so minutes by the time Strout was done, and Braden hadn’t wasted any time trying to get away from that fiasco by calling Eric Waverly and walking him through the visit to ...
Aside from the occasional neighbor looking, usually in vain, for a parking spot, the road had very little traffic. Over the fall, a few of the grade school children on the street had started coming out in the late afternoon to play on the relatively open expanse of asphalt, at first hopscotch and...
This would have been noticeable even if the building weren’t located on such a blighted and vulgar thoroughfare. Since it was on Market Street, though, with its bums and garbage, its debris and stench, its fumes and pornography, the contrast was especially striking.The other day when he’d come to...
He had decided he had slipped up the day before with Lieutenant Glitsky, reading the man all wrong by trusting him. He thought that today he'd better be a little sharper if he was going to do any good work for his client and, while he wasn't ready to admit that his alcoholic intake had slowed him...
He had spam-blocking software but still the majority of his messages were from organizations or businesses he’d never heard of. There were a couple more Web site hits from people interested in his services and several others from law firms he’d already worked with. He forwarded all of the inquiri...
In the first place, none of it was physical evidence. Abrams pointed out that an eyewitness seeing and possibly even identifying Gorman's car did not even under the most generous interpretation rise to the level of proof of anything about Stuart himself. And while the assistant DA found the two d...
JEFFERSON PARKER The genesis of this story goes all the way back to 2009 when John and Jeff discovered a shared love of fishing, while contributing a short story to an anthology called Hook, Line & Sinister. Then, in 2011, the two hung out together on a deepwater fly-fishing trip to East Cape...
San Francisco’s beleaguered head of homicide, Lieutenant Abe Glitsky, has been under fire from both Mayor Leland Crawford and from printed accusations of harassment and police brutality in a rival newspaper. It is public record that Glitsky and Curtlee have a long history as antagonists, beginnin...
Once Daylight Saving Time arrived every year, Jim Scholler barbecued almost every night, and on this warm evening in late May he’d grilled chicken, which they’d eaten with fresh spring asparagus, a loaf of sourdough bread, and Eileen’s “famous” tomato-potato salad with cilantro and red onions. No...
“How is he?” he asked. “I’m afraid he’s going to live.” “You don’t mean that.” “More than you’d think. Do you realize what this is doing to Brittany?” “What ‘what’ is doing to Brittany?” “Dismas, she feels like she killed this boy.” “Don’t say that. I mean it, Susan, don’t say it out loud, even t...
Hardy hadn’t stopped grinning since he’d told the cops in the elevator to rebook Rane Brown. He had just told his wife the story. ‘It has its moments, I must admit.’ ‘So who are you nailing this afternoon?’ Hardy looked at the folders on his desk, still a formidable pile. ‘The afternoon looms lar...
It didn’t take a trained investigator to see that she’d already spent some of the day crying, but the lack of any makeup and a blotchy complexion couldn’t disguise the basic truth of Ian’s description of her. She was, at the very least, kind of pretty. And obviously braless under a San Francisco ...