A Plague of Secrets (Dismas Hardy Series #13)

by John Lescroart

Overview

Dismas Hardy, Abe Glitsky, and Wyatt Hunt return

When high-grade marijuana is found on a coffee-shop manager murdered in San Francisco, it suggests that the shop's owner, Maya Townshend, may be behind more than a caffeine fix. But when another murder exposes a drug-buying A-list celebrity and political clientele, a tabloid-fueled controversy takes the investigation into the realms of conspiracy and cover up.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451228321
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/01/2010
Series:	Dismas Hardy Series , #13
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Lescroart is the author of nineteen previous novels, including The Betrayal, The Suspect, The Hunt Club, The Motive, The Second Chair, The First Law, The Oath, The Hearing, and Nothing But the Truth. He lives in Northern California.

Hometown:

El Macero, California

Date of Birth:

January 14, 1948

Place of Birth:

Houston, Texas

Education:

B.A. in English with Honors, UC Berkeley, 1970

What People are Saying About This

Steve Berry

"Through tight prose, surgical plotting, and relentless pacing, Lescroart offers more of his unadorned reality, expertly exploring the seamier side of law, politics, ethics, and morality. A Plague of Secrets is a prize to be savored."--(Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The Charlemagne Pursuit)

Lee Child

"The best of the best: the best yet in today's best legal thriller series--tense and compelling, of course, but also intelligent, human, and wise."--(Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing To Lose)

Editorial Reviews

Not even pot-tolerant San Francisco can ignore the complications that follow the murder of a dealer who seems to have been keeping half the town high. Dylan Vogler earned $90,000 a year managing Haight-Ashbury's Bay Beans West, twice as much as he would have made at Starbucks, but not enough to keep him from growing and selling high-grade cannabis to a select list of about 70 clients. When he's shot to death outside the coffeehouse clutching a backpack full of weed, everyone who ever knew him goes into a defensive crouch. Inspectors Darrel Bracco and Debra Schiff wonder why BBW owner Maya Townshend would deny knowing anything about his dealing and insist that the only reason for his sky-high salary was to keep a good employee happy. When they learn that Vogler treated his boss like a hired hand; link both of them to a dicey shared past; and place her at the crime scene right around the time of the murder, they promote Townshend to a person of interest. Striking an unholy alliance with a U.S. Attorney eager for publicity, Bracco and Schiff threaten to seize both Townshend's coffee shop and her wealthy husband's real-estate holdings as drug proceeds. When another friend from her shady school days is found murdered, they stick her in the pokey. By this time, Townshend has retained Dismas Hardy as her counsel, and her problems have become his. In fact, given a client whose every utterance is either ambiguous or an out-and-out fib, Hardy doesn't see how he can possibly get her off. There'll be a walloping big courtroom surprise, but as has become customary in Hardy's recent cases (Betrayal, 2008, etc.), this one doesn't come to a full boil until afterwards, in an ill-advised shootout thatpunishes the guilty and then some. Less issue-driven than usual, more of a whodunit-and a sharp one at that.

Kirkus Reviews