Customer Reviews

The Hearing

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

High-ranking police officers often receive calls to come to a crime scene in the middle of the night as just happened to San Francisco's Lieutenant Abraham Glitsky. Someone killed attorney Elaine Wager, a candidate for a judgeship, but this trip is personal as Elaine is Abraham's illegitimate daughter, a fact she never knew. He informs his staff that he expects them to "sweat" a confession from Cole Burgess, a two-bit junkie.

They succeed and book Cole for first-degree murder. Cole's sister hires Dismas Hardy to at least obtain drug treatment so he does not linger in a cell going cold turkey. He agrees to handle that, but nothing more until the ambitious DA decides to use Cole to further her political ambitions by seeking the death penalty. Dismas takes on the role of defense attorney because he begins to have doubts that Cole is the killer.

THE HEARING is one of the year's best legal thrillers as it entertains and shocks in a believable manner. John Lescroart masterly creates characters that are hard on the outside, but contain a soft spot inside their gut. The well-designed story line uses the motivations of the cast to propel the action forward, especially the humorous duels between Dismas and Glitsky. A great storyteller tells quite a story.

Harriet Klausner

In this latest of the Dismas Hardy novels, John Lescroart shows that he is more than up to the challenge of continuing series.

He brings back Hardy and Glitsky and a wealth of other characters. In past books he has tended to focus on Hardy or Glitsky as the main charater, but in this outing he gives them equal billing which provides for a nice balance. All of the secondary characters are eqully well developed and Lescroart keeps enough twists and turns going in the plot to keep this book from becoming predictable.

Lescroart is by far my favorite author of this genre and with this book out does himself. While many authors would turn to formula and coast through a story this far into a series, Lescroart never lets down. We find out more about Hardy and Glitsk's kids and once again David Freeman is back with a solid contribution.

On top of the characterizations there is a very well developed legal story here. Once again Lescroart goes outside the norm and has the bulk of the legal story take place during the preliminary hearing, another neat trick.

An excellant extension of the Hardy saga and well recommended.

Dismas Hardy is back with his ideals intact, his marriage strong, his defense practice going well, and he is a thoroughly likable main character in a series of good legal thrillers. Also back is Abe Glitsky, the tough cop who is Dismas' best friend. In "The Hearing" Abe has a problem and Dismas has to help solve the case as he defends a drug addict with few redeaming qualties who has supposedly killed Elaine Wager. Elaine was perceived to have been a leading member of the black legal community with a good reputation. One of her secrets was that Abe Glitsky was her father. Abe had learned the truth before Elaine's murder, but had not confronted her with it, and after she was killed, he went after the first suspect with a vengence. He refused to allow the suspect medical attention as he was going through herion withdrawl and gave the go ahead for a strenuous interrogation resulting in a "confession." The suspect, Cole Burgess, looks like a promising candidate especially since he was found near the body and had her money and jewelry on his person. Cole's mother is the only one who really cares any longer about what happens to him.

Dismas Hardy is the reluctant defense attorney brought in by Cole's mother. As the story continues, a web of political corruption unfolds within the DA's office and the police department. Elaine Wager's own life was not what it had seemed to be, but as she began to investigate some of the corruption she found, she was trying to made amends when she was murdered.

Elaine's personal assistant, Treya Ghent, is an interesting new character in this series who adds another dimension to the life of Abe Glitsky. This author has successfully brought his characters through his books as they have become old friends and acquaintances to those of us who read everything Lescroart writes.

Searching for a new book, the readers recommendations strongly liked this author---so I gave it a shot. Overall I found the book a very good read; good character development, personal interaction between the parties, a compelling "who done it" and I agree with one writer who states that the courtroom scenes were the best. I am definitely going to purchase another of his books for a comparison read.

I've read every one of John Lescroart's novels and he has never disppointed me. His characters are vivid and real and he is a master plotter. Why he is not an automatic best-seller author is beyond me, he is so much better than some of the authors who are always on the list. "The Hearing" is complex, satisfyingly long and very well plotted, typically Lescroart. Dismas Hardy, Abe Glitzky and all the usual characters are finely drawn and you feel you would recognize them if you met them on the street. This author is one of my very favorites, and I always look forward to a new book by Lescroart.

In "The Hearing", Lescroart weaves a tale that is engrossing and entertaining, if not wholly believable. As another of the Dismas Hardy series, Lescroart brings back some familiar characters - Abe Glitsky among them - in a well crafted story that keeps the pages turning. Unlike James Patterson's "1st to Die", in which the San Francisco setting is superficial and cardboard, Lescroart's San Francisco is an accurate portrayal of the city's liberal political machine and lively culture. The "villains" are despicable enough - enough to want to see them go down, but not so much as to detract from the their credibility. The courtroom drama was as suspenseful and exciting as anything I can remember since the early works of Scott Turow. (I still consider "Presumed Innocent" the best of the genre).

Why only three stars? A few too many distractions that cluttered an otherwise tightly wound plot and puzzling mystery. The relationship between Abe and Treya, for example, was predictable and unneccessary, and the family connection with Cole Burgess, the suspected killer, was just a bit too much "mush". The end, while climactic, was just a bit of a letdown, detracting ever-so-slightly from the superb tale that led up to it. And finally, while Lescroart did a credible job of tagging and tracking a large cast of characters, there were simply too many floating around the pages.

But all things considered, this is a good read, great entertainment, and well worth the time.

"The Hearing" brings back police lieutenant Abe Glitsky and defense attorney Dismas Hardy as they attempt to find out who killed Elaine Wagner - a prominent lawyer whose secret was that she was Abe's daughter from a relationship ended long ago. As more facts about the case are uncovered, both Abe and Dismas begin to doubt that Hardy's client, a junkie arrested at the scene of the crime, was the killer. Glitsky and Hardy are both flawed but good men who maintain a friendship despite their divergent work and personal lives, and they were appealing companions during the couple of days it took to read this generally fast-paced book.

This is the first of Lescroart's Dismas Hardy books I have read. Although it is part of a long-running series, "The Hearing" stands fairly well on its own - though some scenes seem to be included just to allow recurring characters a chance to make an appearance. If this book is typical of Lescroart, then it is clearly the characters, and not the storylines, that keep readers coming back. I found it hard to believe that Hardy's legal strategy really would have worked, and the central villain's actions didn't quite add up. I also found it strange that Elaine's tendency to have problematic relationships with older men is at least partially attributed to the secrecy about her paternity, yet Abe's blossoming relationship with a woman his daughter's age is presented as an unambiguously positive development. Maybe this will play out further in the next book? Lescroart has me interested enough to want to read it and find out.

Another good Invstigative Courtroom Drama by Lescroart. I found it a bit unbelievable in places (Why try the case at initial hearing?) but Dismas and Glitsky delivered the goods again. For people who are new to Lescroart's characters you might want to start with The 13th Juror or A certain Justice.

Remember the novel "Anatomy of a Murder"? The lawyer defends a man accused of murder who is acquitted, yet we find out at the end that the defendant was guilty of the crime. Hope springs eternal that I will find another shocker of this sort. The norm, however, is that we know the defendant our lawyer hero defends will turn out to be innocent. My mathematical law in this regard is that the innocence of the accused is directly proportional to the amount of evidence against him/her. Will this book fall into this category? I'm not giving away anything by saying that while most of the community wants a hanging, lawyer Dismas Hardy has an increasing belief in his client's innocence. Did the homeless heroin addict kill the beautiful, prominent attorney Elaine Wager? Dismas and his police lieutenant friend Abe Glitsky pursue the case, and find a possible tie in involving child molestation.

Everything is going fine here. It's an entertaining, engrossing tale that we trial fans know will end up in some sizzling courtroom scenes. Good guys turn out to be not so good guys. People disappear, people have heart attacks. Good fun. Now comes the bad part. We ultimately find ourselves in a true Perry Mason setting. The problem with such settings is that they make it difficult for me to suspend disbelief. They are situations that just don't seem to happen. I was disappointed with the way the story progressed, and thus have given it fewer stars. Perry Mason fans, however, should buy the book without delay.

Lescroart's character-driven legal thriller, "The Hearing," again features San Francisco's moody African-American/Jewish homicide detective Abe Glitsky and his good friend, defense attorney Dismas Hardy. The story opens with a midnight call to Glitsky reporting the murder of a young assistant DA, Elaine Wager, the victim of an apparent mugging. A suspect, a homeless heroin-addict, was caught in the act of robbing the body, gun in hand. But for Gltizky it's no ordinary case.

Wager was his daughter, though he only discovered the fact a couple years before and hadn't acknowledged himself to Elaine, for vague, unsatisfactory reasons which haunt him throughout the novel.

Glitzky takes out his anger and grief on Cole Burgess, the pathetic murder suspect, extracting a confession, and the DA, New-Age liberal Sharon Pratt, decides to make Burgess the cornerstone of her re-election bid, going for the death penalty. Pratt trumpets her case to the press: Burgess, a homeless white man, kills a prominent, African-American community figure in the course of a robbery.

But Glitzky is having second thoughts. And his friend Hardy has accepted the defense, albeit reluctantly.

The story pits political maneuvering, within the police department and the DA's office, against the demands of justice as Glitzky is suspended for giving the interrogation tape to Hardy and Pratt strives to try the case in the newspapers before going to court.

Lescroart spins a complex web of ambition, greed, posturing and venality around the suspense of investigation, courtroom drama, and conspiracy, while also involving the reader in large human emotions and issues of character.

Pratt is a bit shrill and annoying but Glitzky's dogged honesty and his struggle to understand himself and his grief more than compensate. Lescroart has another well-written winner.