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.
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John Lescroart is a master at building worlds. Over the course of his many novels, he’s created a supple, elegant theater of San Francisco, populating it with an entourage of fascinating people.
At the top of that list is former-policeman, now defense lawyer, Dismas Hardy. Next is Hardy’s close friend, Abe Glitsky, of the San Francisco Police Department. A few books back in the series (The Hunt Club) we met Wyatt Hunt, a local private detective.
A Plague of Secrets brings these three personalities together again when Dylan Vogler, the manager of a coffee shop in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, is found dead cradling a knapsack full of marijuana. When Hardy learns that Vogler is actually supplying dope to many of San Francisco’s business and political elite, the tension and turmoil ratchet up into high-stakes suspense. Add in a murder charge that Hardy is called upon to defend, and Lescroart’s feisty, devil-may-care hero is once again thrust into the epicenter of a raging legal hurricane. The book’s title says it all. There is indeed a plague of secrets, one in particular that Hardy becomes legally bound to protect.
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 lush and lusty, fascinating and smart, told in a wry, appealing voice. I’m often asked if I will ever write a legal thriller. Maybe. Who knows? But if I ever do I hope it’s half as good as one of John Lescroart’s. He’s in the top echelon of thriller masters. I’ve been a fan for a long time (don’t tell him, okay?). Guilt is one of my all time favorite books. A Plague of Secrets is a prize to be savored—another of John Lescroart’s beguiling and entertaining romps.
John Lescroart (pronounced "less-kwah") is a big believer in hard work and single-minded dedication, although he'll acknowledge that a little luck never hurts. Now a New York Times bestselling author whose books have been translated into 16 languages in more than 75 countries, John wrote his first novel in college and the second one a year after he graduated from Cal Berkeley in 1970
The only hitch was that he didn't even try to publish either of these books until fourteen years later, when finally, at his wife Lisa's urging, he submitted Son of Holmes to New York publishers--and got two offers, one in hardcover, within six weeks!
But about six years before that first hardcover publication, John's ambition to become a working novelist began to take shape. At that time, as Johnny Capo of Johnny Capo and His Real Good Band, he'd been performing his own songs for several years at clubs and saloons in the San Francisco Bay Area. On his 30th birthday, figuring that if he hadn't made it in music by then, he never would, he retired from the music business.
He'd been writing all along, and didn't stop now, although his emphasis changed from music first, prose second, to the other way around. Within two months of his last musical gig, he finished a novel, Sunburn that drew on his experiences in Spain. Since John didn't know anyone in the publishing world, he sent the manuscript to his old high school English teacher, who was not enthusiastic. Fortunately, the teacher left the pages on his bedside table, and his wife picked them up and read them. She loved the book and submitted it in John's name to The Joseph Henry Jackson Award, given yearly by the San Francisco Foundation for Best Novel by a California author. Much to John's astonishment, SUNBURN beat out 280 other entrants, including Interview With A Vampire, for the prize.
Though Sunburn wasn't to be published for another four years, and then only in paperback, the award changed John's approach to writing. He started to think he might make a living as an author, something he'd never previously believed possible for a "regular guy with no connections." He started paying for his writing habit by working a succession of "day jobs"--everything from a computer programmer with the telephone company, to Ad Director of Guitar Player Magazine, to moving man, house painter, bartender (at the real Little Shamrock bar in San Francisco), legal secretary, fundraising executive, and management consultant writing briefs on coal transportation for the Interstate Commerce Commission!!
John moved to Los Angeles and in the next three years finished three long novels, the last of them featuring a private investigator who shared the name Dismas Hardy (and very little else) with the man who would become John's well-known attorney/hero. Since he'd gotten Sunburn published without using a literary agent (an old friend had shown it to a secretary at Pinnacle Books in Los Angeles, who bought it), John went on submitting his work to New York over the transom, receiving many kind rejection letters, but no offers. Finally he realized that even if he wasn't fated to become a commercially successful author, he wanted to be involved in books and literature. So he enrolled in the Masters Program in Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
It was not to be.
While John and his wife, Lisa Sawyer, were preparing that summer to move to New England, he was paying bills by typing technical papers on coal transportation for a consulting firm. Asked by the boss what he thought of the paper, John commented that the argument it made wasn't very compelling and that it wasn't very well-written. His boss challenged him: could he do it any better? In a week, John re-wrote the 400-page draft, which went on to win before the ICC. This led to a "day job" offer that John couldn't refuse. Graduate school fell by the wayside.
But after a year and a half, even a lucrative day job had become a burden. Nothing would do for John by now but to write, but he had little time for writing with his high-paying, career-oriented job. Lisa suggested taking a look at some of the old manuscripts and submitting them--she remembered reading and liking Son of Holmes. How about that one? There was one 14-year-old yellowed and brittle copy of the manuscript left in the world--in the basement of their best man, Don Matheson's, apartment. Six weeks later, John had his first hardcover book deal.
Over the next seven years, back in Los Angeles again, John and Lisa were finally ready to start their family. During this time, John wrote several screenplays and published three more books while he held down a job as a word processing supervisor at a downtown law firm. He rose each day at 5:30 and went to a room they'd built in their garage, where he wrote four pages of his latest in two hours. Then he worked his nine-to-five, ate a bag lunch, and stayed downtown, typing briefs and pleadings at various other law firms until 10:00 or 11:00 at night.
Finally he was publishing, but he wasn't making a living. And then in 1989, at the age of forty-one, he took a break to go body-surfing at Seal Beach. The next day, he lay in a Pasadena hospital. From the contaminated sea water where he'd been surfing, he'd contracted spinal meningitis. Doctors gave him two hours to live.
John now looks back on his 11-day battle with death as the turning point in his career. He quit the last of his day jobs to move back to Northern California and to write full-time, with intense focus and a renewed dedication. The resulting books, richer in terms of theme and story, found a devoted readership and propelled him into the elite circle of bestselling authors--only twenty years to overnight success!
Get ready to stay up all night! John Lescroart's newest entry into the Dismas Hardy series is full of plot twists, political ambition and heart pounding courtroom scenes.
The book opens with Harlen Fisk, a reoccuring character who is a county supervisor, asking Dismas if he would take a call from his sister, Maya Townshend. It seems that the manager of her coffee house was murdered, and Maya might be in the sights of the police. Another murder later, and Maya is arrested. Dismas once again has to defend a complicated murder trial, in which the defendant is facing life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
The courtroom scenes are realistic, and the portrayal of a pro prosecution judge made my blood pressure rise! Throw in a ladder climbing Federal Prosecutor, and it's enough to give anyone a headache.
Abe Glitsky, Dismas' long time friend and lieutenant in the police dept, is dealing with his own heartbreaking personal problems, when his young son is in a tragic accident. Without Glitsky's supervision, two cops under his command are a little too eager to rush to judgement about Maya, and the drama that unfolds kept my heart pounding, right until the shocking climax of the story.
I personally think this is one of Lescroart's best entries into the series, and I can't wait for the next one!
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Let me begin by stating that I'm a big John Lescroart fan. I am a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and really enjoy Lescroart's work because they are based here. The characters of Abe Glitsky, Dismas Hardy, Gina, Will and others are well developed and it's been a joy the progression of the kids growing up, etc.
I'm not a big fan of this particular book in the Dismas series. I don't want to delve into the plot but suffice it to say; I agree with another reviewer that suggests pieces of the plot appear to be missing. The secret that Harlen Fisk held was never revealed. It almost feels as though there were many tennacles to the plot and this one fell through the crack.
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In John Lescroart's "A Plague of Secrets," San Francisco-based criminal defense attorney Dismas Hardy once again takes center stage, along with his close friend, Abe Glitsky, the head of San Francisco's Homicide Department, and Hardy's investigator, Wyatt Hunt. Hardy's latest client, thirty-two year old Maya Townshend, is a wealthy woman whose husband makes millions in the real estate business. She also owns Bay Beans West, a popular coffee shop. When the shop's manager, Dylan Vogler, who sidelines as a marijuana dealer, is found shot to death in an alley behind Bay Beans, suspicion falls on Maya. An aggressive homicide inspector, Debra Schiff, contends that Maya had a strong motive to want Vogler dead and a flimsy alibi to account for her whereabouts during the shooting.
Schiff is concerned because Maya's brother is Harlen Fisk, a former cop and member of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, and Maya's aunt is Mayor Kathy West. With connections like these, it will be difficult to nail her. However, Debra is willing to go the extra mile to insure that Townshend is arrested, even if it means widening the probe with the help of federal attorney Jerry Glass. Because of a serious personal issue that is preoccupying Abe Glitsky, he gives Schiff more leeway than he normally would in such a high profile matter. Fearing that his sister is being railroaded, Fisk asks Dismas to be Maya's criminal defense attorney; she will need Hardy's considerable skills and courtroom savvy to get out of this mess. When another body turns up, the stakes are instantly raised. Although there is only a small amount of physical evidence pointing to Maya, the circumstantial evidence is damning.
Unsurprisingly, political shenanigans, underhanded tactics, and jockeying for favorable media attention all interfere with the dispensation of justice. Hardy fears that "the entire courtroom drama could unfold as a large multi-tentacled conspiracy fueled by drugs and moral turpitude in high places." On the plus side, Hardy is an old pro who has rarely lost a case, and he is not easily intimidated. In addition, he knows how to navigate the difficult terrain of a criminal trial with the best of them. The most absorbing scenes are those that take place in the courtroom. Diz and his opponent, assistant DA, Paul Stier, both try to score points with the jury and attempt to stay on the "good" side of the ill-tempered and sardonic Superior Court judge, Marian Braun. If Maya is innocent, then it is reasonable to assume that she was framed by a clever perpetrator. This is the famous SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It) defense. While Hardy and his team search for the "other dude," the only clear thing about this murky case is that a number of witnesses are lying, including Maya herself.
This is not one of Lescroart's best works. The complex plot generates few sparks and most readers will not be sufficiently invested in the lifeless Maya to care very much about her fate. Rather slow moving at times, "A Plague of Secrets" lacks the freshness, character development, and thought-provoking themes that have made Lescroart so popular in recent years. Although red herrings abound to keep readers guessing, this novel lacks the electricity and originality that we have come to expect from the talented John Lescroart.
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Steve Berry is the New York Times bestselling author of international suspense thrillers, 
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