Showing results by author "John Lescroart" in All Categories

Teaming up with New York Times best-selling author Jeffery Deaver, Suspense Magazine offers up a nail-biting anthology titled Nothing Good Happens After Midnight. This thrilling collection consists of 13 original short stories representing the genres of suspense/thriller, mystery, sci-fi/fantasy, and more.

A federal judge is murdered, found shot to death in his home - together with the body of his mistress. The crime grips San Francisco. To homicide inspector Devin Juhle, it first looks like a simple case of a wife's jealousy and rage. But Juhle's investigation reveals that the judge had powerful enemies...some of whom may have been willing to kill to prevent him from meddling in their affairs.

When the bullet-ridden body of a Silicon Valley billionaire washes up on shore, assistant D.A. Dismas Hardy finds himself the prosecutor in San Francisco's murder trial of the century. The suspect: a Japanese call girl with a long list of prominent clients. But when a bizarre series of events blows the case wide open, Hardy finds himself on the other side of the law - as a lawyer for the defense.

The call comes at midnight. It looks like a tragic and petty murder - a rising star in San Francisco's legal firmament found shot in a dark alley. But for homicide lieutenant Abe Glitsky, the crime cuts horribly close to home - unknown to anyone, the victim was his daughter. Seething, Glitsky leans hard on his only suspect - a homeless heroin addict found lingering over his daughter's body, with her jewelry in his pocket and a smoking gun in his hand.

Mark Dooher is a prosperous San Francisco attorney and a prominent Catholic, the last person anyone would suspect of a brutal crime. But Dooher, a paragon of success and a master of all he touches, is about to be indicted for murder. Charged with savagely killing his own wife, Dooher is fighting for his reputation and his life in a high-profile case that is drawing dozens of lives into its wake.

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.

No one mourned when San Francisco DA Wes Farrell put Paul Riley in prison eleven years ago for the rape and murder of his girlfriend. And no one is particularly happy to see him again when he’s released after The Exoneration Initiative uncovered evidence that pinned the crime on someone else. In fact, Riley soon turns up murdered, surrounded by the loot from his latest scam. But if Riley was really innocent all along, who wanted him dead?

Late one night, a teenage African American foster child named Tanya Morgan plummets to her death from the overpass above San Francisco's Stockton tunnel. But did she fall...or was she pushed?

Somewhere in the once-placid streets of San Francisco, a young man is on the run, charged by the media with a crime he didn't commit, hounded by demagogues, hunted by a desperate police department. One cop knows that Kevin Shea is innocent of a brutal racial murder. An ambitious politician will use Shea for her own ends. And a down-and-out lawyer is all that stands between Kevin Shea and an even more atrocious crime. For when there's no law left, justice is the only hope.

Kate loves her life. At 44 she's happily married to her kind husband, Ron, blessed with two wonderful children, and has a beautiful home in San Francisco. Everything changes, however, when she and Ron attend a dinner party and meet another couple, Peter and Jill. Kate and Peter exchange only a few pleasant words, but that night, in bed with her husband, Kate is suddenly overcome with a burning desire for Peter. What begins as an innocent crush soon develops into a dangerous obsession.

The Mercy Rule is a brilliant and moving human drama set against a backdrop of relentless suspense, legal complexity and moral ambiguity. Dismas Hardy, the former bartender, loving husband and father, and reluctant defense attorney of The 13th Juror, returns here in his most challenging case.

It starts with a double homicide. Because of the high profiles of the victims - a politically connected socialite and his glamorous fiancée - the mayor of San Francisco herself demands that a high-ranking detective be put on the case. And so Abe Glitsky is thrust into the controversial investigation.

In The 13th Juror, Dismas Hardy, lawyer/investigator, undertakes the defense of Jennifer Witt, accused of murdering her husband and their eight-year-old son as well as her first husband, who had died nine years earlier from an apparent drug overdose. While preparing his case, Hardy learns that both of Jennifer's husbands had physically abused her. But Jennifer refuses to allow a defense that presumes her guilt. She is not guilty, she claims. Hardy is now driven to seek an alternative truth a jury can believe.

Dismas Hardy is looking forward to cutting back his work hours and easing into retirement after recovering from two gunshot wounds. He is determined to spend more time with his family and even reconnect with his distant son, Vincent. But Dismas just can't stay away from the courtroom for long, and soon he is pulled into an intense family drama with fatal consequences. Grant Carver, the vigorous patriarch of the Carver family and its four-generations-owned family business, has been murdered.

Moses McGuire has good reason to be concerned about his beautiful 23-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 24 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.

Dismas Hardy is finally on top: as a managing partner at his thriving, newly reorganized law firm, he's a rainmaker and fix-it guy for clients leery of taking their chances in a courtroom. Now Hardy's up-and-coming associate, Amy Wu, brings him a high-profile case: Andrew Bartlett, the 17-year-old son of a prominent San Francisco family, has been arrested for the double slaying of his girlfriend and his English teacher.

The Curtlees are a powerful force in San Francisco, unscrupulous billionaires who’ve lined every important pocket in the Bay Area in pursuit of their own ascent. So when the family’s heir, Ro Curtlee, was convicted of rape and murder a decade ago, the fallout for those who helped to bring him to justice was swift and uncompromising. The jury foreman was fired from his job and blacklisted in his industry. The lead prosecutor was pushed off the fast track, her dreams of becoming district attorney dashed.

In his new life as a bartender at the Little Shamrock, Dismas Hardy is just hoping for a little peace. He's left both the police force and his law career behind. Unfortunately it's not as easy to leave behind the memory of a shattering personal loss - but for the time being, he can always take the edge off with a stiff drink and a round of darts.

Dismas Hardy knows something is amiss with his trusted secretary, Phyllis. She’s been behaving out of character and disappearing without notice. Dismas becomes even more concerned when he discovers Phyllis has been reluctantly playing host to her convict brother, a man just released from San Quentin after serving a 25-year sentence for armed robbery and attempted murder. Things take a shocking turn with Phyllis is suddenly arrested at work, accused of being an accessory to the murder of Hector Valdez, a coyote who’d been smuggling women into the country from El Salvador and Mexico.

When San Francisco attorney Dismas Hardy gets a call saying his wife never picked the kids up from school, he's worried. Frannie's a great mother. Turns out there's a good explanation: She's in jail. Unbeknownst to her husband, Frannie has just appeared before a grand jury - and refused to share a crucial piece of information about her friend Ron, who's accused of killing his wife.