Dismas Hardy

WHEN A BRUTAL RAPIST IS MURDERED, A LOVING FATHER STANDS ACCUSED OF THE CRIME. DEFENSE ATTORNEY DISMAS HARDY MUST DEFEND HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW AND OLD FRIEND MOSES McGUIRE IN A THRILLING CASE THAT HITS FAR TOO CLOSE TO HOME. Moses McGuire has good reason to be concerned about his beautiful twenty-three-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 twenty-four 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. Making things even more complicated, McGuire has fallen off the wagon, and his stay in prison could bring to light old secrets that would destroy Hardy and his closest colleagues' careers. As the overwhelming evidence against McGuire piles up, Dismas Hardy focuses on planting doubt in the minds of the jurors-until, in a feat of legal ingenuity that is staggering in both its implications and its simplicity, Hardy sees a new way forward that might just save them all. But at what price? For the first time since 2009, Dismas Hardy, the author's most beloved protagonist, returns in a masterful novel that showcases Lescroart's extraordinary story-telling gifts: a cast of flesh-and-blood characters, morally complex situations, and relentless, nail-biting suspense.

From New York Times bestselling author John Lescroart, a riveting novel featuring Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky on the hunt for clues about a woman who has gone missing. 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. And the lawyer he wants for his defense is none other than Hardy himself. Hardy calls on his friend, former homicide detective Abe Glitsky, to look into the case. At first it seems like the police might have it right; the Chases' marriage was fraught with problems; Hal's alibi is suspect; the life insurance policy on Katie was huge. But Glitsky's mission is to identify other possible suspects, and there proves to be no shortage of them: Patti Orosco-rich, beautiful, dangerous, and Hal's former lover; the still unknown person who had a recent affair with Katie; even Hal's own step-mother Ruth, resentful of Katie's gatekeeping against her grandchildren. And as Glitsky probes further, he learns of an incident at the San Francisco jail, where Hal works-only one of many questionable inmate deaths that have taken place there. Then, when Katie's body is found not three blocks from the Chase home, Homicide arrests Hal and he finds himself an inmate in the very jail where he used to work, a place full of secrets he knows all too well. Against this backdrop of conspiracy and corruption, ambiguous motives and suspicious alibis, an obsessed Glitsky closes in on the elusive truth. As other deaths begin to pile up he realizes, perhaps too late, that the next victim might be himself.