John LescroartRecensioni

Well paced - enough to have me stay up late to finish it.½

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(2006)First read of author. Not all that good after a very promising start as Wyatt Hunt is fired from being a child services officer to become a private detective, not the usual character development. Really bogs down when a dozen of his closest lawyer friends become part of his agency. Too many to keep track of and why does he need them anyway. Main plot was OK as he tries to solve murder of prominent Federal judge and his ?girlfriend?. Booklist ReviewLescroart, the author of the New York Times best-selling series starring Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky, introduces a new series character here. Wyatt Hunt is an embittered ex-caseworker in San Francisco, dismissed from Child Protective Services in a dispute with his boss. He is now at the first stages of recovering from this blow, which threatens not his love of salary or sense of self but his mission to save the most vulnerable castoffs in the city. It's pretty standard in mysteries, and even cliched, to have somebody wrongly fired (usually from the police) sink into seclusion or the bottle and then move into private-eye work as a way back to life. This premise gives the character a depth of expertise to draw on and, theoretically, a sufficiently cynical outlook on life. Lescroart draws on this tradition by having his hero drawn out of his seclusion by a homicide inspector friend asking him to look into a murder. The murder is pretty juicy--a federal judge and his mistress are both found dead in his home. One of the suspects is a lawyer/TV crime commentator whom Hunt has a crush on and who suddenly disappears. Hunt works with a loose group of friends, all with different backgrounds and expertise, to solve the judge's murder and the lawyer's disappearance. Hunt is the narrator, much given to long-winded descriptions of his thought processes. This works great with Spenser, but it's boring with Hunt, who hasn't emerged enough from his self-pity to be a credible sleuth, although his child-services background gives him the ability to read motives in surprisingly insightful ways. Enjoyable plot but unconvincing detective. Lescroart fans will be interested, even so. ConnieFletcher.

unputdownable, riveting, private-investigators, law-enforcement, local-politics, friends, contemporary, mental-health-issues, cooperation, lawyers, ex-cons, false-information, false-identities, family, family-dynamics, family-expectations, mistakes, multiple-murder, investigations, investigators, thriller,suspense*****

Despite the steep learning curve rising from the fact that I jumped in at book #19, I only read two or three chapters when I hunted up an affordable audio copy (vision issues).
The plot itself spiraled and branched like elk antlers and scooped up extra characters along the way. Each of the characters, both main and ancillary, are very clearly drawn and realistic. Thanks for the intro, but it was definitely worth the price for the audio!
I requested and received an EARC copy from Atria Books via NetGalley. Thank you!
P.S. Bernie Rhodenbarr says that St Dismas is the patron saint of thieves ;)

This is another terrific John Lescroart book. Abe Glitsky, one of his regular characters, is one of my favorites. This book is chilling and well-written.

This was a fun, fascinating and well-written murder mystery, with one of the murders having occurred 40 years before the current time. And the book featured a very well-done description and narrative of issues faced by an adopted person who learns in mid-life some shocking things about his birth parents, things that led to his adoption.

Number 19 in the Dismas Hardy series. Primarily an Abe Glitsky plot line. Although there are MANY twists and turns, this one didn't have some of the elements of earlier books that made them rate higher in my estimation.½

Hard to believe this is the first book I have read by this author. Solid 4 stars. Great mystery/lawyer procedural. Takes place in San Francisco, and rolls along at a steady pace.
I look forward to reading other books by this author.

First edition very fine

Dismas Hardy/David Freerman defend "difficult" wife caused of murdering her husband and son.

A solid John Lescroart mystery that is packed with his ongoing characters, vividly described settings, and complex, intriguing plot lines. A number of twists and turns build the engaging story.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria for the opportunity to read this book.

Fatal by John Lescroart is one of those books that will sell a good number of copies based on the author's name. He has an audience and a voice that his readers have come to know and love. This was my introduction to his writing and I am not sure I would read another. While the writing was ok, there were some speeches that just seemed odd, the premise was pretty strange, and I had guessed the ending due to one of the speeches in the beginning of the book.
The story is about Kate, who chooses to cheat on her husband with Peter a friend and partner of her husband Ron. Kate meets Peter in a hotel for a one shot affair. The problem is Peter begins to unwind and starts to obsess over Kate. He goes to her house, calls her, and winds up near her when she is having lunch with her best friend and homicide investigator Beth. All of a sudden a terrorist attack occurs. Yes, you read that right. This is also the first quarter of the book.
In the next section, we are a few months after the attack when Peter washes up on shore. He has been shot and dumped into the river and it is up to Beth to find out what happened to Peter. She knows that Kate had an affair with a man named Peter, is it the same Peter?
I was actually into the beginning story. I figured I was in for a a reverse fatal attraction type story. When the terrorist attack happened and the book turns into a murder mystery following, I sighed out loud. It became a slog to read through, especially since I guessed who did it from something said in the beginning of the book. It turned out I was completely right.
This leads me to the speeches. There are some strange speeches within this book. Beth does a speech about how much she loves her gun, which borders on a 2nd amendment speech. It also goes no where. There is a strange speech about the priests not liking gay and lesbian people, which doesn't pan out. Finally, there is a lesson about anorexia which just is strange as it is a side character. I know people love Lescroart, but since I was a first time reader of his, it screamed that the editor is giving him freedom to write whatever he wants even if it doesn't fit.
I wound up not enjoying this one and felt there were too many things fit into a book that we have all read before. The hard part is I know this will sell a bunch of copies and wind up on the bestseller list. I found it just ok.
I gave it 2.5 stars.
I want to thank NetGalley for an advanced copy of the book. I received it for free in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars

Brittany is in her early 20s and beautiful. When Rick, whom she recently dated, doesn’t want to let her be, he is abusive and ends up raping her. Rick is murdered soon after. All signs point to Brittany’s father, Moses. Moses’ friend Hardy will be his lawyer.

I liked the bulk of the storyline and it picked up in the second half during the trial, I thought. However, I found all the characters a bit confusing (there were a lot of them!), and they sometimes referred to them by first name, sometimes last name, sometimes a nickname. It was hard to figure out who was who and how they were related to one another in a lot of cases.

There were a couple of other things going on, as well… Moses, Hardy and a group of their friends were hiding something – it sounds like they had done some vigilante justice a while back? This storyline never really amounted to anything, though. Also, there was a former cop/murderer who was in the witness protection program. It was only when I finished the book that I discovered this part of a series (in fact, it’s #14!). So that probably explains the other (unfinished) storylines.½

This book was a departure from the usual formula for this series, in that much of the book was background leading up to a case that Dismas Hardy inherited. A lot of it took place in Iraq, and lacked the usual humor and banter between the main characters, but it was interesting in that it gave a good sense of what it was like over there, and how money and human life were both wasted by our involvement. The formula of building up a hopeless case was still there, though; but in this case, even the defendant didn't know if he was guilty, so it made it even harder to figure out what happened. But that never stopped the team of Hardy and Glitsky before, so why would it stop them now.

Another typical book from this series. By typical, I mean it has the constant wisecracks and goofy humor from Dismas Hardy, the very dry wisecracks and humor from his friend Abe Glitsky, and a crime where an innocent person has the deck stacked against him in a case that seems hopeless and unfair.

This one was a little different, in that the prosecuting side was not totally convinced of the suspect's guilt, and even came to believe the other guy did it. But the other guy seemed to always have an alibi.

I suspected who the guilty party was for the main case, but was never sure, of course. But that didn't detract from my enjoyment, and I always enjoy the books of this series.

The audiobooks are done well, if you are interested.

I'm disappointed in this book for a few reasons. One is personal; my love for this series is in a large part due to the interactions between Hardy and Abe Glitsky, and there wasn't much of that in this book.

But there were a couple of technical things that bothered me. These might be considered spoilers, somewhat, so I'll put spoiler tags around the rest of the review just in case. I don't know that it's really a major spoiler, but read at your own risk.


The first problem I had was when Hardy's wife, Frannie, came down hard on him because she thought he was putting their son, Vincent's life at risk due to his involvement in the murder case Hardy was handling. But in my opinion, this wasn't happening at all. Vincent got involved because a friend of his was murdered. Nobody suspected it was related to Hardy's case. In fact, Hardy's family became aware of the involvement only because they later suspected it was related, so if Hardy had not been handling the murder case, they may never had even known of the danger. Nevertheless, it would have happened whether Hardy was handling the case or not.

Another problem was when they had a suspect, but no proof, so his investigator, Wyatt Hunt, was to follow the suspect hoping he would walk into a trap, which involved trying to kill someone using the same gun as he used in two other shootings. The gun was the only link, and was very important. Yet Hunt was following him alone, and in fact almost lost him once. It seems like for something as important as this, there should have been more than just one person following him.

First, thanks to NetGalley for providing an advanced review copy of this book.

A great read, but not as good as many of the ones from the past, in my opinion. But I still had trouble putting it down toward the end.

I'm a big fan of this series, and already knew most of the characters, and also the back story from The First Law. I'd advise anyone to at least read that book before this one for maximum enjoyment. Reading more of the previous books, or all, would be better.

I think this is the first book to feature Hardy's secretary, Phyllis, as more than a butt of Hardy's jokes or complaints, and she's shown to have a somewhat surprising secret life - surprising because she's usually such a no-nonsense, business-only character. This part of her private life explodes in a way that causes many unforseen consequences, resulting in her arrest as an accessory to murder, and almost to the arrest of Hardy and some of his friends.

It was a pretty exciting story, but I believe there was also a political motive to the story, which was to highlight some of the problems facing undocumented aliens in the US, especially the younger ones who were brought here as infants and have no life or knowledge of their legal homes. One was even born in the US, but didn't have proof of any kind. These people are all, in their minds at least, as American as any of us, and would suffer greatly if deported. So they try to keep a very low profile, and are totally unprotected by our normal laws. If they accidentally get noticed somehow, their only choice is to go into hiding. I think the author did address some of the related issues, such as criminals who might get deported instead of arrested for their crimes, etc.

One thing I didn't like so much is that the characters seemed a little too one-dimensional in this book. The bad guys were really bad, the good guys were really good, and there wasn't much gray area. Also, there wasn't as much of the humorous bantering, it seemed, although there was some.

I hope there will be another in the series, now that Hardy's firm has collected a few old friends such as Wes Farrell and Gina Roake back as active partners, and Phyllis has been shown to have an actual life.

Another interesting story with a good mix of humor and outrage. Maybe it could use more T-shirts, but it had a few good ones. OK, lest you think I'm crazy, I'm talking about his partner who likes to wear humorous T-shirts a lot, seemingly only once for each one. For example, there was one good one in this book that said "Haikus can be easy./But sometimes they don’t make sense./Refrigerator."

This book was similar to many other ones in that an innocent person becomes entangled with the police and arrested; things begin to look really bad, and there is danger that they might be found guilty. Then Hardy pulls one out of his hat and gets them off. It also demonstrates a problem I've seen in a lot of books, which probably happens in real life too. Once the police find someone they like for a crime, they stop looking for alternative suspects or facts. They start using a faulty logic where they start with a false premise: this person is guilty. Therefore, they interpret all new information in that context, and ignore anything that doesn't fit. At worst, they start leading witnesses by coloring their testimony to match their view of the facts, until an innocent person becomes a monster. This is one of the reasons I oppose the death penalty.

Great story with many of the beloved characters from the other series, with lots of twists and turns. You probably won't guess who done it, but, as usual, the characters are the main story. If you like them, you'll probably like this one.

I rounded up to 4 stars because I'm a John Lescroart fan boy, and I've read all or most of the books in this series, so I know the characters and this filled in a lot of background for one of the lesser-known regulars, the investigator used by Dismas Hardy.

The story was fairly interesting, including a tie-in with Jim Jones and his group, but by itself, the story wasn't that exciting. Only the characters and the writing of John Lescroart made it interesting.

I'd recommend reading the first two book in the series first so you'll know all the players. If you already read them, then you will want to read this one regardless of what I say.

4 1/2 stars (plus 1/2 for having cameos from so many of my favorite characters like Dismas Hardy, Abe Glitsky, etc). If you're a fan, this is a must read. It tells all about Hardy's investigator Wyatt Hunt, his friendship with Devin Juhle, and how he got started with his agency. He's a pretty interesting guy.

The story had several lines of investigation, with a big surprise at the end. All of the lines seemed reasonable, until they weren't.