John Grisham has been writing bestselling legal thrillers since A Time to Kill in 1989. He has sold hundreds of millions of copies of his books around the world in 42 languages and is regularly ranked as one of the most successful writers on the planet. Grisham is an activist and an outspoken critic of […]
Continue Reading...Once upon a time mystery novels traveled straight lines through a minefield of obstacles and threats to a simple, straightforward conclusion. The detective, the victim, or some other investigator would confront a puzzle and, in the end, solve it. But bestselling mystery authors don’t write books that way anymore. Instead of a single puzzle, usually […]
Continue Reading...Juliana Brody is living the good life. She’s “in her early forties, but as her mother liked to say immodestly, she had good genes.” She’s a respected judge on the Superior Court in Boston, and happily married with two teenage children. And she’s touted to be in contention for Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme […]
Continue Reading...Eighteen sixty-nine. Rural Scotland. A 17-year-old boy named Roderick Macrae has brutally murdered a neighboring man and two of his children. He freely confesses to the crime, stating that “I carried out these acts with the sole purpose of delivering my father from the tribulations he has lately suffered” at the hands of the murdered […]
Continue Reading...“After you murder someone, life is never the same.” So begins The Rule of Law, the 18th entry in John Lescroart‘s consistently suspenseful series of mystery novels featuring San Francisco criminal defense attorney Dismas Hardy. And it’s not long before we learn that the killer in question is the city’s newly elected District Attorney, Ron […]
Continue Reading...John Grisham is well known around the world as an author of popular courtroom dramas and other legal thrillers. Now, in 2018, he has ventured into new territory with an extraordinary historical novel. Although some of the action takes place in the courtroom, the central elements of the story are a shocking murder, the dynamics […]
Continue Reading...John Lescroart surprises with a courtroom drama in which the suspense is all about whether Dismas Hardy’s new case will ever get into a courtroom. Poison is the 17th novel in Lescroart’s first-rate series about the San Francisco defense attorney who is also an ex-Marine, a bartender, and a former assistant DA. As the title […]
Continue Reading...Denise Mina’s new thriller, The Long Drop, was a Washington Post Book of the Year for 2017. The book is based on contemporaneous accounts and two later books about the trial of Peter Manuel, who came to be known as “Scotland’s first serial killer.” Manuel was a career criminal who had come to the attention […]
Continue Reading...Over the past three decades, bestselling San Francisco author John Lescroart has been writing novels about the dark side of human character. He’s produced more than two dozen. His most popular series features former cop, bartender, and trial attorney Dismas Hardy; Dismas’s best friend, Abe Glitsky, who heads the homicide department at SFPD; and Dismas’ investigator, Wyatt […]
Continue Reading...Dismas Hardy’s resumé is a little difficult to understand: former Marine (combat in Vietnam), former San Francisco cop, former Assistant DA, now one-quarter owner of the Shamrock and full-time bartender there. The explanation is simple, though. The events that induced him to leave a promising legal career began when his infant son died as a […]
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