Customer Reviews

The First Law (Dismas Hardy)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In John Lescroart's new thriller, "The First Law," San Francisco resembles the Wild West. A corrupt and malicious individual named Wade Panos wields tremendous political power. Panos and his gang rob and murder whomever they please with impunity, and the police either cannot or will not stop them.

Abe Glitsky, a veteran detective, has been moved out of homicide and into the payroll department of the police force, much to his chagrin. However, when Sam Silverman, an elderly friend of Abe's father, is robbed and murdered, Abe takes a look at the case. Much to his surprise, Abe is stymied in his inquiries at every turn; it soon becomes clear that his colleagues on the force do not want Abe interfering in their investigation. To make matters worse, Abe's good friend, Dismas Hardy, represents a man who is being framed for killing Sam. As Abe and Dismas continue to challenge Wade Panos, dead bodies begin piling up and it becomes clear that if Dismas and Abe do not back off, they may be risking their lives.

I love the characters of Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky. They are macho and sensitive as well as intelligent and compassionate. I admit that the plot of "The First Law" is a bit far-fetched. It is difficult to believe that such lawlessness would prevail in a city as cosmopolitan as San Francisco. However, Lescroart makes the point that evil people with no conscience do exist. If normally law-abiding citizens are to fight such individuals, they sometimes have to act in unorthodox ways in order to survive.

At four hundred pages, "The First Law" is a bit too long. However, the plot and the dialogue are lively and compelling and the characters are nicely drawn. Lescroart maintains a high level of suspense and excitement until "The First Law" reaches its dramatic and action-packed conclusion.

This series tracking Dismas Hardy, (attorney), and his good friend Abe Glitsky, (San Francisco Homicide Detective), has gone through some changes, both in the characters' lives as well as the narrative perspective, i.e. Dismas vs. Abe. But on the whole it has been solid - usually with our two protagonists facing an impossible situation, (heavy-handed politics, seemingly insurmountable evidence stacked against an innocent client, etc.), but who prevail at the end against all odds. The plot is no different here - Abe and Dismas find themselves battling police corruption/incompetence while dealing with personal threats to both family and friends - with a crooked and evil, (and of course wealthy), businessman at the center of this web. What is bizarre is that the solution to this crusade is given away in the first two pages of this not so small book - with the rest being a chronicle of how bad these bad guys can be, (they even shoot Bambi from a helicopter), while poor Abe and Dismas "pursue" all available options until they are simply "forced" to act on their own. Excitement, tension, subtlety are all absent in this one and if there was a point - I missed it. Pass on this one.

I picked up a copy The First Law in an airport bookstore when faced with an unexpected flight delay. I had not read any of Lescroart's other works and did not know what to expect. The storyline was intriguing, effectively bouncing back between the present and the past while building to the final scenes in the book. Character development was solid, although I suspect that the book would have been better is I was more familiar with some of the characters that clearly had been part of Lescroart's previous works. The First Law was not spectacular but it was definitely good enough that I will be back to sample more of Lescroart's works.

In a way, I thought this novel is a closure for the Hardy/Glitsky serial that is going on since the first novel "Dead Irish". I am a fan of Lescroart for his style and the flow of his books though almost all his novels, the end comes like a revelation to Hardy. But, this once was a bit of a stretch making the city like a pawn for the big bad wolf. In spite of it, it was very entertaining though I hate to see David character die. I would definitely recommend it.

THE FIRST LAW is the latest book in the series involving San Francisco lawyer Dismas (Diz) Hardy and police lieutenant Abe Glitsky. However, it is neither a legal thriller or courtroom drama as the earlier books have been, but is a straight police procedural (with the investigation handled in a totally inept way) interspersed with fast paced action. Glitsky has recovered from the severe wounds suffered in THE OATH, but has been replaced as head of the Homicide Unit during his recuperation and is now head of payroll. When his father's best friend is murdered during a robbery at his pawnshop, Glitsky soon finds his requests and suggestions during the investigation are viewed as interference and an attempt to regain his former position. Meanwhile, the detectives in charge uncover evidence that points to a good friend and former client of Diz, John Holiday.

As subsequent murders occur and Hardy uncovers evidence that calls into question Holiday's guilt, he tries to convince an increasingly reluctant Abe to enlist the help of the police and subsequently their mutual friend DA Clarence Jackman. However, these leads point in the direction of the family of Wade Panos, the politically well connected head of the Patrol Special, a private SF police force which has been the source of much of the information being used to develop the case against Holiday. Concomitantly, Hardy and his long time mentor and associate David Freeman are pursing a multimillion dollar civil case against Panos and his organization (and also the police department as their liaison) based on allegations of brutality and evidence tampering. Thus, when apparently conclusive evidence against Holiday appears and Holiday subsequently disappears, Hardy is viewed as having lost all credibilty because of his conflict of interest. Further murders and violence incidents occur, eventually both the Hardy and Glitsky families are directly threatened.

This story is filled with the characters that we have come to know through the course of the previous books, including Diz' wife Frannie and kids Rebecca and Vincent, his brother-in-law Moses McGuire, Treya Glitsky, and Gina Roake. They and their relationships are further developed and are an integral element of this story. The reader has to accept the premise that police investigators can be so totally misled, and the compounding of their errors is extremely frustrating at times. However, the story proceeds in a way that is totally internally consistent, and it will immediately resonate with any reader who has either has experienced police incompetence/malfeasance or knows someone who has.

In the author's preface preceding the story, Lescroart acknowledges the inspiration derived from BLOODY SEASON, a book about the gunfight at the OK Corral. THE FIRST LAW then begins with a brief scene involving Diz and Moses that takes place chronologically very near the end of the story, and that effectively creates the tension that will build for the rest of the book with regard to whether the faith in the law upon which Hardy and Glitsky have relied their entire lives is misplaced. Midway through page three Moses defines "the first law" for Diz as "you protect your life and the people you love", and we immediately are aware that this story may well end with the modern day equivalent of the OK Corral shootout. Thus, there is never any real mystery of who the murderers and criimnals are, although there are a few minor surprises. The real question is who will be left standing and who might suffer collateral damage, and it is not pretty. In fact, even several of the good guys and long time characters in the series are not immune from the violence which results from the original botched robbery and murder.

So, if you want an action filled story with some legal twists and are a fan Hardy and Glitsky, you should like this book.

I really enjoy Mr. Lescroart's books so this one was a real disappointment. Hardy and Glitsky, normally full of character were just going through the motions in this book. Reading it was like walking through sludge instead of zipping through. Thats the problem with being excellent, good is not good enough.

This is not Lescroart's best effort.

Sloppiness Part A. A single coincidence can make a great beginning to a book: former lovers meet by chance at an airport; a cop sees a murder suspect walking down the street; a Army private who has become an officer finds out his first sergeant is his old drill instructor. Great. Pile on the coincidences though, and what you have is sloppiness and laziness. So...let's think about this for a minute. Abe Glitsky and Dismas Hardy are the principal characters of the book. Nat Glitsky is Abe's father. Nat's friend is murdered. Coincidence one (how many people do *you* know who are murdered?). SPOILER ALERT. The chief suspect? It just happens to be the family friend of Nat's son's best friend, Dismas Hardy. Wow! Now that's a second coincidence. The executive assistant to the D.A. overseeing the prosecution just happens to be Nat's daughter-in-law. Wow! A third coincidence! And the D.A. himself is the friend of Nat's son. A fourth coincidence! Pretty soon the coincidences are piling up like a Victor Hugo novel.

Sloppiness Part B. What's wrong with this sentence: "He picked up the glass and poured it's contents into the sink" (p 307)? Answer: the word "it's" should be a possessive ("its"), not a contraction ("it's"). That's an elemental mistake, a high school mistake, demonstrating carelessness and sloppiness. Look, I make that mistake occasionally too, but I'm an amateur, Lescroart and his editor are professionals, which means you're not supposed to make mistakes like that, especially when you're printing a million copies of that sentence and distributing it all over the world.

Poor structure. The novel attempts a noir leitmotif by providing out-of-sequence snippets relating to the ultimate showdown between the good guys and the bad guys (pp 3-6, 145-148, 267-268). Noir works well sometimes but Lescroart steps on one of his plot twists (the identity of the bad apple inside the S.F.P.D.) by doing so, wrecking part of his plot.

Slow. Particularly with the middle part of the book, not much happens. People are suspicious, trying to figure out who's doing what and why, but there's not much forward movement. I suppose part of the reason for the slowness can be attributed to the noir business mentioned above. If you were to read those noir snippets and the last four chapters of the book, you will have captured 80% of its plot and storyline.

Don't get me wrong - I love Dismas and Abe, and read this book with the usual enthusiasm. I won't bore you with the plot, but it follows the usual - Lescroart sets up a moral dilemna with a lively mix of characters and dialogue, although bro in law Moses comes off a cardboard straw man in this edition.
But the ending - nothing resolved except a simplistic shootout that does nothing to resolve the moral dilemna, a weepy worthy of Danielle Steel maybe, left me wondering if Lescroart is getting a bit fat-happy-and-lazy. Get serious, John, if you want these books to stand with writers like Michael Connelly, etc.

What do you do when the justice system doesn't work? That's the question John Lescroat asks in this book, one of his Dismas Hardy/Abe Glitzky series. It takes place in San Francisco where one of Hardy's clients is framed for the murder of a pawnshop owner. The police are hampered in their investigation of the case by a private security firm that is just a little too involved in the investigation. Attorney Dismas Hardy and his friend Police Lieutenant Abe Glitzky try to find the real killers but are hampered by the police department, the district attorney- in fact, by the system that is supposed to make sure justice is served. Hardy and Glitzky try to follow the normal rules of procedure and let the justice system take its course, but it becomes more and more apparent to them that in this case, someone is using the system to subvert justice.

This book started slow, and it took me a while to get into it. It is intricately plotted however, and once I got into it, I found it hard to put down. I was disappointed in the ending--it did not wrap everything up with a nice little bow the way I like. I understand that it was a realistic ending, but I wanted the satisfaction of seeing all the people who refused to listen to Glitzky and Hardy admit that they were wrong and that Glitzky and Hardy were right. This book gave me no satisfaction in that regard.

While I found the book unsatisfying, I would read another book in the series. I liked the characters and once I got into the book, I really enjoyed it, even if I didn't like the ending. I listened to the audio version of the book and found the reader to be a distraction. He inserted pauses after about every five words, which was kind of annoying since it frequently broke up sentences and phrases. He also had a voice that sounded like Barney Rubble with a bad cold. That may, in part, be responsible for my having difficulty getting into the book. If I read another book in the series, I'll probably try the print version just because this reader was so detrimental to my enjoyment of the book.

The First Law, by John Lescroart, is the 9th entry in the excellent series featuring defense attorney Dismas Hardy and his longtime friend San Francisco Police Department Homicide Investigation Specialist Lieutenant Abe Glitsky. This book focuses on police corruption and an attack on Hardy's longtime mentor David Freeman. Less a legal thriller than other books in the series, this books notches up the action in which the Hardy and Glitsky face several tough choices that will factor in books to follow.

This is great reading, and well worth a four star rating. Enjoy.

For those new to this outstanding series, the order of books is as follows:

Dead Irish
The Vig
Hard Evidence
The 13th Juror
The Mercy Rule
Nothing but the truth
The Hearing
The Oath
The First Law
The Second Chair
The Motive
Betrayal
& A Plague of Secrets [scheduled for release in July 2009]

I personally recommend reading them in order for the best experience. The characters evolve and are fully realized.