Mystery & Suspense
New York Times Bestseller John Lescroart celebrates his 20th thriller by bringing all his well-known series characters into the courtroom in A Plague of Secrets
In his first true legal thriller in some time, his most beloved characters all return to the courtroom to celebrate a milestone in Lescroart's career. His twentieth thriller, A Plague of Secrets brings together Dismas Hardy, the ex-cop/ex-attorney who has found his way back to law throughout Lescroart's previous books, Abe Glitsky, the San Francisco homicide detective, and private investigator Wyatt Hunt, in his most ambitious thriller yet, one rife with blackmail, political intrigue, and multiple murders.
When Dylan Vogler, the manager of the popular Bay Beans West coffee shop in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, is gunned down seemingly without reason, it is not just the murder that has all of San Francisco talking but also the fact that he was selling marijuana through the store—and to an elite list of clients.
Dismas Hardy steps in to help Maya Townshend, the absentee owner of the shop—and the beautiful and extremely wealthy socialite niece of the city's mayor. Dismas believes this will be a simple case of hand-holding until the police identify the suspect—that is until another of Maya's acquaintances turns up murdered, and the newspapers begin to reveal the names of the coffee shop's clientele. This list contains celebrities, political bigwigs, law-enforcement, and even Dismas's law partner. Now, Dismas must question how much his client knew about what was actually going on inside her business and what will happen to his law partner should his name be revealed from the client list.
Read an excerpt from A Plague of Secrets:
Chapter 1
Friday, the end of the workweek.
On the small deck outside his back door a lawyer named Dismas Hardy sat with his feet up on the deck's railing and savored a rare moment as the sun spent the last hour of its day lowering itself toward the horizon behind his home.
The house cast its ever-lengthening shadow out over the neighborhood to the east—San Francisco's Richmond District—and it threw into relief the bright west-facing facades of the buildings in the city before him as it stretched away to downtown. The random window reflected glints of sunlight back at him, fireflies in the gathering dusk, shimmering in the Indian-summer air.
He sipped his gin and ice, placed the glass down on the meshed metal of the picnic table they'd set up out here, and was suddenly and acutely aware that he could not be more content. His wife, Frannie, whom he still loved after twenty-three years, was inside the house behind him, humming as she did whatever she was doing. His two children were away and doing well at their respective schools—Rebecca at Boston University and Vincent at UC San Diego. The law firm of Freeman, Farrell, Hardy & Roake, of which he was the managing partner, was humming along as though it were on autopilot.
Hardy looked for a moment into the blue above him, blinking against a wave of emotion. Then, being who he was, his mouth cracked into a small grin at himself and he lifted his glass for another sip.
Inside, the telephone rang twice and stopped, which meant that it was someone they knew and that Frannie had picked it up. Her voice, with notes of sympathy and understanding, floated out to him, but he didn't bother trying to make out any of the words. She had begun to have a somewhat thriving career of her own as a marriage and family therapist and often would wind up counseling her clients from home.
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