Table of Contents
An unpredictable plot... engrossing from start to finish.The Albany Times Union
With their park view and their old-fashioned detail, the Victorian houses on San Franciscos Steiner Street were highly valuable. With their wooden construction, they were also highly vulnerable. So when Paul Hanovers multimillion dollar home went up in flames, it was all over very quickly. And when the bodies of Hanover and his girlfriend were found in the charred debris, it appeared that the end came even more quickly for themjudging from the bullet holes in their heads.
But this isnt just any double homicide. Hanover was a friendand donorto the mayor. She wants answers, now. And she wants Abe Glitsky, Deputy Chief of Inspectors, to provide them. With the help of his close friend, attorney Dismas Hardy, Glitsky reluctantly jumps on the casetrying not to step on departmental toes along the way. Before its over, the pair will have to face an old lover and an old enemyand follow a trail of evidence that stretches far beyond their usual jurisdiction....
Superb... it should end up as one of the years most talked-about page-turners in this popular genre.
Calgary Herald
Grisham and Turow remain the two best-known writers in the genre. There is, however, a third novelist at work today who deserves to be considered alongside Turow and Grisham. His name is John Lescroart.... If you havent yet discovered Lescroart,The Motiveis an excellent place to start.
Chicago Sun-Times
Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky are back and in more entertaining form than ever.... What separates Lescroart from the usual courtroom novelist is his characters.... They tend to come alive as people and not just action figures. Winston-Salem Journal
As always Lescroart can be relied on to produce nail-biting trial scenes. Orlando Sentinel
Dry wit.... The motive is as unusual as any Ive come across in mystery novels. The Blade (Toledo, OH)
Praise for John Lescroarts Previous Novels
The Second Chair
Lescroart gives his ever-growing readership another spellbinder to savor. Library Journal
Great characters and a wonderful sense of place.
Chicago Tribune
The First Law
With his latest, Lescroart again lands in the top tier of crime fiction. Publishers Weekly
The OathAPeoplePage-Turner
A terrific crime story. People
Hardy and Glitsky are like good wine, improving with time. The Orlando Sentinel
The Hearing
A spine-tingling legal thriller.Larry King, USA Today
Nothing but the Truth
Riveting... one of Lescroarts best tales yet.
Chicago Tribune
The Mercy Rule
Well written, well plotted, well-done.
Nelson DeMille
Guilt
Begin Guilt over a weekend.... If you start during the workweek, you will be up very, very late, and your pleasure will be tainted with, well, guilt.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
A Certain Justice
A West Coast take on The Bonfire of the Vanities... richly satisfying. Kirkus Reviews
A gifted writer.... I read him with great pleasure.
Richard North Patterson
The 13th Juror
Fast-paced... sustains interest to the very end.
The Wall Street Journal
Hard Evidence
Engrossing... compulsively readable, a dense and involving saga of big-city crime and punishment.
San Francisco Chronicle
Dead Irish
Full of all the things I like. Lescroarts a pro.
Jonathan Kellerman
ALSO BY JOHN LESCROART
Betrayal
The Suspect
The Hunt Club
The Second Chair
The First Law
The Oath
The Hearing
Nothing but the Truth
The Mercy Rule
Guilt
A Certain Justice
The 13th Juror
Hard Evidence
The Vig
Dead Irish
Rasputins Revenge
Son of Holmes
Sunburn
To Lisa Sawyer
Again, and again, and again...
Out of the crooked tree of humanity no straight thing can ever be made.
Immanuel Kant
PART ONE
By location alone, a block from Fillmore Street as it passes through the upwardly challenged Hayes Valley, Alamo Square would not be among the sexier neighborhoods in San Francisco. But one of the most popular and recognizable posters of the City by the Bay captures a row of beautifully restored and vibrantly painted three-and four-story Victorians that face the park on Steiner Streetthe so-called Painted Ladies. The poster created a certain cachet for the area such that the cheapest of these houses now go for three-plus. Million.
The blaze at Paul Hanovers, in the middle of this block, began around 8:00 p.m. on May 12, although the first alarm wasnt called in until nearly 8:30. Fires love old Victorians. Even though Hanovers house had been stripped to the bare bones twenty years earlier retrofitted for earthquakes and freshly insulated with fire-resistant materialit is the nature of Victorian design to have funky interior spaces, oddly shaped rooms, crannies and closets and unusual passages. Within the walls, since heat wants to travel up, fires employ the vertical stud lines as flues, almost as chimneys, to transport themselves effortlessly and quickly up and up into the roof spaces, where billowing smoke is most often noticed first.
Even in a neighborhood of great sensitivity to the threat of fireof old, very valuable wooden houses in wall-to-wall proximityno one noticed anything amiss at Hanovers until the fire had progressed to the unfinished attic. The late-arriving fog camouflaged the first appearance of the smoke, and the wind blew it away. By the time one of the local residents realized that what he was actually seeing was not fog but thick clouds of smoke pouring out from under the eaves of his neighbors roof, the fire was well advanced.
As soon as the first alarms fire trucks arrivedthree engines, two trucks, two battalion chiefs, an assistant chief and a rescue squadthe two-man aerial ladder team from the first engine began climbing to Hanovers roof, intending to ventilate it by cutting a hole into it with axes and chainsaws. Meanwhile, four men in Nomex turnout pants and coats and wearing Scott Air-Paksthe initial attack squadgot to the front door, found it unlocked and opened it right up. Although they were armed with Akron fog nozzles that could spray water over a wide angle and get them closer to the flames, in this case they were greeted by a roiling cloud of hot thick black smoke, impossible to see through. They could make no progress.
Al Daly, officer of the initial attack squad, spoke matter-of-factly into the headpiece of his walkie-talkie. Front door is breached, Norm. We got a working fire here. Daly was speaking to his battalion chief, Norm Shaklee, out front in the street. The words conveyed great urgency. A working fire meant they would need at least one more alarmfour more engines, another truck, two more chiefs. In a house this size with so much exposure to the homes on either side, this working fire could go to five alarms, San Franciscos maximum.
