REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


JOHN LESCROART – Dead Irish. Donald Fine, hardcover, 1989; Island Books, paperback, 1991. Signet, paperback, 2005.

        — The Vig. Donald Fine, hardcover, 1990; Dell, paperback, 1992. Signet, paperback, 2006.

        — Hard Evidence. Donald Fine, hardcover, 1993; Ivy, paperback, 1994. Signet, paperback, 2002.

   These came highly recommended by my local mystery book store for their local color (San Francisco), and superior plotting and characterization. I didn’t find the local color very effective (and this is something I do appreciate when it’s well done), but I enjoyed the first two books for their portrait of Dismas Hardy, former cop, former lawyer, present bartender who finds his interest in life reviving after the death of his child and subsequent divorce as he’s drawn into investigations that the police want to close the books on but that he stubbornly insists on pursuing.

   My favorite character in the two books is not Dismas (who’s not unappealing) but his homicide detective friend, Abe Glitsky, who has his own crisis in The Vig and sets the wheels in motion for a transfer to L A.

   I note that the L. A. Times also thinks the books are “replete with convincing details of contemporary life in the bay area.” From that, I can only conclude that life in the Bay Area is not so different from me in Pittsburgh, or Salem, or Alvin, or wherever else people hang out at bars, have difficult relationships, and make decisions that don’t always (or even often) turn out to be the right ones (if there is such a thing as a right decision).

   Hard Evidence is a horse of a somewhat different color. Diz is working as an assistant D. A. but soon resigns and signs on as defense lawyer for his former father-in-law, a judge accused of killing a Japanese call girl.

   This is, then, a courtroom drama, a genre that I avoid like the plague, but I found I couldn’t put the book down, and probably enjoyed it at least as much than the other two books in the series. Abe Glitsky plays a less prominent role and the novel is quite long, but I found skimming wasn’t working so I settled down and read the text about as closely as I read anything these days.

   I still don’t get any strong sense of place, but the relatively small cast is well portrayed, the puzzle (it’s not just a trial) is intriguing and the characters are all irritating and sympathetic in roughly equal proportions. I will put this in the plus column.