Review by Booklist Review
In the latest Dismas Hardy legal thriller, a missing-persons case gets very complicated, very fast. Hal Chase is a guard at the San Francisco County Jail; one night, while he's out at the airport picking up a relative, his wife, Katie, disappears from their home. Hal is soon picked up by police as the prime suspect. Because Katie was a client of Hardy's marriage-counselor wife, Hal wants Dismas to take his case. Hardy asks his old pal, former homicide cop Abe Glitsky, to pitch in with the investigative legwork. Glitsky soon uncovers some serious holes in Hal Chase's story his alibi, for instance, is very shaky and when Katie's body is found, and her husband is arrested for the murder, Dismas wonders if he could possibly be defending a guilty man, while Glitsky wonders if he'll come out of this case alive. Lescroart has occupied a chair at the head table of the legal-thriller society for quite awhile, and this smartly plotted, sharply written novel will do nothing to dislodge him from that lofty perch. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The return of Lescroart's two most popular characters ensures mega-interest for an author whose books have sold 10 million copies and been translated into 22 languages across 75 countries.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of bestseller Lescroart's entertaining 18th thriller featuring San Francisco DA Dismas Hardy (after 2013's The Ophelia Cut), Hardy learns that Katie Chase, wife of sheriff's deputy Hal Chase, has gone missing. The cops question Hal, who's later arrested after the discovery of Katie's body. Hardy agrees to help Hal, and puts newly retired friend Abe Glitsky, once head of homicide in the SFPD, on the case. When Glitsky asks reporter Jeff Elliot for some background on Hal, he gets an earful about inmate deaths at the city jail under the direction of Sheriff Burt Cushing. Glitsky's best hope is finding the killer, or at least a viable suspect, one of whom could be Patti Orosco, Hal's rich and beautiful onetime lover, or the unknown man Katie had an affair with. Glitsky shakes the rust off his investigative skills as he chases down every lead. The action builds to a surprising and surprisingly cynical conclusion. Author tour. Agent: Barney Karpfinger, Karpfinger Agency. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Just because San Francisco attorney Dismas Hardy's friend Lt. Abe Glitsky's been forced out as chief of SFPD Homicide doesn't mean he can't go back to workas an independent investigator for Hardy himself, with all the complications fans would expect.Katie Chase, a client of Hardy's family-counselor wife, Frannie, has been reported missing by her husband, Deputy Sheriff Hal Chase, who works as a prison guard. When Hal calls in his stepmother, Ruth Chase, instead of Katie's parents, Curt and Carli Dunne, to help with his two small children, he risks tearing his family even further apart. Hal himself is behind his wife's disappearance, Curt and Carli darkly intimate, and the discovery of Katie's corpse close to the family home gives more credence to their charges. Hal hires Hardy to represent him, and since Hardy's regular investigator is away on vacation, he asks Glitsky to investigate. So far the case looks much more like a straightforward whodunit than Lescroart's large-scale studies of Bay Area political corruption (The Ophelia Cut, 2013, etc.). But that all changes when Glitsky begins looking into a rash of suspicious activity at the jail, especially the fatal slip and fall of inmate Alanos Tussaint. Probing ever more deeply, Glitsky links nefarious County Sheriff Burt Cushing and Adam Foster, his chief deputy, to both the allegations of illegal violence in the jail and an unusually nasty coverup. Ordered by Hardy to stick to collecting evidence he can use in court, Glitsky, concluding that "the facts of the case cried out for obsession," announces his determination to see justice done whatever the cost. The cost promptly rises.Glitsky isn't the only one who's in for a bumpy ride, for beneath the cathartic outburst of homicides are more perps than you can waggle a Taser at. The investigation, heartfelt but untidy, ranks in the middle range among Hardy and Glitsky's caseload. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
