Series: Wyatt Hunt Novels | Publication Date: January 12, 2010
Wyatt Hunt-hero of John Lescroart's New York Times bestseller --returns with a new protégé, in an intricate, tightly plotted thriller set against San Francisco's glamorous charity circuit
Mickey Dade hates deskwork, but that's all he's been doing at Wyatt Hunt's private investigative service, The Hunt Club. His itch to be active is answered when a body is discovered: It's Dominic Como, one of San Francisco's most high-profile activists-a charismatic man known as much for his expensive suits as his work on a half dozen nonprofit boards. One "person of interest" in the case is Como's business associate, Alicia Thorpe-young, gorgeous, and the sister of one of Mickey's friends.
As Mickey and Hunt are pulled into the case, they soon learn that the city's golden fundraiser was involved in some highly suspect deals. And the lovely Alicia knows more about this-and more about Como-than she's letting on.
Treasure Hunt is both a nail-biting thriller and a coming-of-age story, filled with Lescroart's trademark San Francisco flavors. Mickey Dade, its young protagonist, gradually learns the hard lessons Hunt knows only too well, as the world he though he knew unravels around him.
Lescroart, the author of the New York Times best-selling series starring Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky, introduced new series lead Wyatt Hunt in 2005’s Hunt Club. Hunt makes appearances in both The Suspect (2006) and A Plague of Secrets (2009), but he returns to center stage in this new thriller set amid San Francisco’s thriving nonprofit world. When the body of Dominic Cuomo is found in a lagoon, the movers and shakers in local charity organizations are shocked. Cuomo had been doing good work for years, sat on the boards of six major charities, and was loved by many. Hunt and his associates decide to run interference for the police, setting up a hot-line number and a substantial reward for any tips leading to an arrest. They have plenty of work cut out for them when they are soon flooded with calls from psychics and crackpots. However, they find any number of suspects when they discover that the nonprofit world is rife with corruption and that beloved do-gooder Cuomo had a soft spot for the ladies. With in-depth characterizations of two loyal Hunt associates, siblings Hunt rescued from their heroin-addicted mother; a lovingly detailed San Francisco backdrop; and an intricately developed plot, Treasure Hunt is sure to satisfy Lescroart’s legion of fans. --Joanne Wilkinson
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!
This review is from: Treasure Hunt (Wyatt Hunt Novels) (Hardcover)
The Hunt Club, a private detective firm in San Francisco headed by Wyatt Hunt is holding on to solvency by a thread. In fact it's a stretch to call it a firm. The employee roster consists of Wyatt a licensed detective... Mickey Dade who does office work and "go-fer" assignments while pursuing his real dream of becoming a chef... and an empty chair that used to be inhabited by Mickey's sister Tamara... who is M.I.A. and "shell- shocked" in the aftermath of her former boyfriend being a murderer in a prior episode by this author. After Wyatt tells Mickey that he's going to have to shut down The Hunt Club in the near future... Mickey decides he'll attempt to take fate into his own hands and find the soon to be defunct detective firm some new business. The following amalgamation of serendipitous circumstances may be a little too convenient for some readers to accept. Mickey while walking by a lagoon comes across the dead body of Dominic Como who "had either founded or sat on the boards of no fewer than six major charities in San Francisco". It turns out that Dominic who was taking in exorbitant sums of money from government agencies... public donations... protection rackets... moving companies... rehab facilities... and more... was murdered. It so happens that Mickey who shares a small apartment with his aforementioned "shell-shocked" sister along with their grandfather Jim Parr... who lo and behold used to be a personal driver for Dominic. After stumbling across the body Mickey is interviewed by local reporters and when he says he works for The Hunt Club a detective agency they think he's a detective and his face... name... and company... are plastered on the evening news. So the moribund detective agency gets free publicity which creates a bevy of potential client activity. Mickey a hertofore cooking class student and office "go-fer" comes up with a plan to have Dominic's charitable and business foundations help create a reward "kitty" that would channel leads from people who wouldn't want to talk to the police to The Hunt Club... and the foundations would pay The Hunt Club for its services. The person that must give final approval on this proposal is Len Turner "a lawyer, pretty much at the top of the charity food chain."
Len approves the proposal based on the understanding that all evidence and info uncovered will be cleared with him and he'll decide what goes public. Wyatt Hunt desperate for financial survival agrees to the semi-ludicrous arrangement. What follows is the equivalent of a "MURDER SHE WROTE" or "MATLOCK" episode. The rest of the book is investigative foot work with the usual suspects... drivers... department heads... scorned lovers... temperamental wife... and loony tipsters such as "the balloon lady" who says she saw Dominic's body dropped from a blimp into the lagoon... all hoping for a large reward.
There is very little physical action and unless you're a hard core fan of Julia Child or Wolfgang Puck... you may be stymied at times by too many intricacies regarding the simple task of making and eating a meal.
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This novel is written in Lescroarts trademark writing style: crisp, clear, and fun to read. the glimpses into the life of San Francisco the book offers are priceless. However, the author offers a cast of characters that it's impossible to care about. Wyatt Hunt is a cartoonish superman-type detetcive agency owner. His smugness is extremely annoying. Mickey is his bumbling protegee who falls in love with a very nasty woman. It seems like Lescroart wanted Mickey's love interest to be a positive character but she is in truth nothing other than disgusting. Mickey's drama queen sister Tamara completes the cast of extremely annoying characters that populate this book.
I will not read another Wyatt Hunt novel. They are a waste of time. Lescroart should go back to his Hardy/Glitsky series.
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This review is from: Treasure Hunt (Wyatt Hunt Novels) (Hardcover)
In San Francisco private investigator Wyatt Hunt is feeling the economic down turn as clients are almost nonexistent. His receptionist Tamara Dade quit leaving Wyatt with one employee her brother, Mickey, who is bored and wants field work, but no clients hire the firm.
Mickey has his chance when he finds the body of activist Dominic Como, who was on the board of over a dozen charities. He persuades his boss to let him investigate, which should bring in fame and money. Several suspects surface with strong motives from money to jealousy, but the prime person that Hunt and Dade focus on is Alicia Thorpe; and not just because she is beautiful, but due to her acting as if she is concealing something from the cops and the sleuths.
The latest Wyatt Hunt private investigator case (see The Hunt Club) is a fast-paced thriller that seems to go nowhere until a final gala with cops and suspects so that the hero can pull a dead rabbit out of the hat. Still Treasure Hunt is fun to follow as Wyatt and Mickey work the city streets to solve the case of the charity mogul murder.
Harriet Klausner
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