Showing results by author "John Lescroart" in All Categories

A beautiful woman paid it with her body. A seedy lawyer used somebody else's money. It's the vig - the exorbitant interest mob loan sharks take on their money. Now, in the city by the Bay, everyone has to pay.

The Mercy Rule is a brilliant and moving human drama set against a backdrop of relentless suspense, legal complexity and moral ambiguity. Dismas Hardy, the former bartender, loving husband and father, and reluctant defense attorney of The 13th Juror, returns here in his most challenging case.

Moses McGuire has good reason to be concerned about his beautiful 23-year-old daughter, Brittany. She moves quickly from one boyfriend to the next, and always seems to prefer a new and mysterious stranger to a man she knows something about. But her most recent ex, Rick Jessup, isn’t willing to let her go, culminating in a terrible night when Brittany is raped. Within 24 hours, Rick Jessup is dead, Moses McGuire is the prime suspect in the investigation, and Dismas Hardy has been hired to defend his brother-in-law.

Dismas Hardy knows something is amiss with his trusted secretary, Phyllis. She’s been behaving out of character and disappearing without notice. Dismas becomes even more concerned when he discovers Phyllis has been reluctantly playing host to her convict brother, a man just released from San Quentin after serving a 25-year sentence for armed robbery and attempted murder. Things take a shocking turn with Phyllis is suddenly arrested at work, accused of being an accessory to the murder of Hector Valdez, a coyote who’d been smuggling women into the country from El Salvador and Mexico.

Mickey Dade hates deskwork, but that's all he's been doing at Wyatt Hunt's private investigative service, The Hunt Club. His itch to be active is answered when a body is discovered: It's Dominic Como, one of San Francisco's most high-profile activists - a charismatic man known as much for his expensive suits as his work on a half dozen nonprofit boards. One "person of interest" in the case is Como's business associate, Alicia Thorpe - young, gorgeous, and the sister of one of Mickey's friends.

The first victim is Dylan Vogler, a charming ex-convict who manages the Bay Beans West coffee shop in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. When his body is found, inspectors discover that his knapsack is filled with high-grade marijuana. It soon becomes clear that San Francisco's A-list flocked to Bay Beans West not only for their caffeine fix. But how much did Maya Townshend - the beautiful socialite niece of the city's mayor, and the absentee owner of the shop - know about what was going on inside her business?

When Dr. Caryn Dryden is found floating dead in her hot tub, homicide inspector Devin Juhle targets a suspect close to home: her husband, Stuart Gorman. After all, Stuart recently asked for a divorce...and he stands to gain millions in insurance. His alibi - that he was at his cabin on Echo Lake that weekend - doesn't keep him out of hot water. But maybe a shrewd attorney will.

At last recovered from a near-fatal gunshot wound, Lieutenant Abe Glitsky is back at work. But instead of returning to his old job as chief of homicide detail, he's assigned a desk job in the payroll department, where he has no business investigating murders -until his father's closest friend is shot dead in a downtown pawn shop.

Raised by loving adoptive parents, San Francisco private investigator Wyatt Hunt never had an interest in finding his birth family - until he gets a chilling text message from an unknown number: "How did ur mother die?"

Late one night, a teenage African American foster child named Tanya Morgan plummets to her death from the overpass above San Francisco's Stockton tunnel. But did she fall...or was she pushed?

Kate loves her life. At 44 she's happily married to her kind husband, Ron, blessed with two wonderful children, and has a beautiful home in San Francisco. Everything changes, however, when she and Ron attend a dinner party and meet another couple, Peter and Jill. Kate and Peter exchange only a few pleasant words, but that night, in bed with her husband, Kate is suddenly overcome with a burning desire for Peter. What begins as an innocent crush soon develops into a dangerous obsession.

Dismas Hardy is in big trouble, hardly unfamiliar territory to the San Francisco defense attorney. But with his wife, Frannie, involved, all the rules are changed and the stakes have never been higher.

The Curtlees are a powerful force in San Francisco, unscrupulous billionaires who’ve lined every important pocket in the Bay Area in pursuit of their own ascent. So when the family’s heir, Ro Curtlee, was convicted of rape and murder a decade ago, the fallout for those who helped to bring him to justice was swift and uncompromising. The jury foreman was fired from his job and blacklisted in his industry.

Moses McGuire has good reason to be concerned about his beautiful 23-year-old daughter, Brittany. She moves quickly from one boyfriend to the next, and always seems to prefer a new and mysterious stranger to a man she knows something about. But her most recent ex, Rick Jessup, isn’t willing to let her go, culminating in a terrible night when Brittany is raped. Within 24 hours, Rick Jessup is dead, Moses McGuire is the prime suspect in the investigation, and Dismas Hardy has been hired to defend his brother-in-law.

San Francisco private investigator Wyatt Hunt never had an interest in finding his birth family - until he gets a chilling text message: "How did your mother die?” The answer is murder, and urged on by curiosity and the mysterious texter, Hunt takes on a case he never knew existed, one that has lain unsolved for decades. His family’s dark past unfurls in dead ends. Child Protective Services, who suspected but never could prove that Hunt was being neglected, is uninformed; his birth father, twice tried but never convicted of the murder, is in hiding.

On the evening before Thanksgiving, Hal Chase, a guard in the San Francisco County Jail, drives to the airport to pick up his step-brother for the weekend. When they return, Hal’s wife, Katie, has disappeared without a clue. By the time Dismas Hardy hears about this, Katie has been missing for five days. The case strikes close to home because Katie had been seeing Hardy’s wife, a marriage counselor. By this time, the original Missing Persons case has become a suspected homicide, and Hal is the prime suspect.

On Spain's Costa Brava, passion and intrigue are everywhere - especially in the hearts of those who dwell there. As the dictator Franco teeters on the edge of overthrow, two couples are entwined. One is a husband and wife bored with the existence they have drifted into, the other a passionate, combative pair who relish every moment of life. Into this potent mix comes a young American seeking his missing lover - bringing a shadow of danger into the machinations already at work.

As the dictator Franco teeters on the edge of death - a death that will completely overturn the political structure of Spain - two couples are entwined. One, a husband and wife bored with the existence they have drifted into. The other, a passionate, combative pair who relish every moment of life. Into this potent mix a young American arrives, seeking his missing lover - bringing a shadow of danger into the machinations already at work. Soon the political tension in the country reaches the breaking point....