Guilt » (Reissue)

Famous for his series of bestselling legal thrillers starring San Francisco lawyer Dismas Hardy, John Lescroart has an interesting perspective on the serendipity surrounding his success. "It almost makes me say I believe in justice," he explains in our exclusive audio interview, "but, of course, I've written too many of these books to make that stand!" he admits with a chuckle.

Mark Dooher is a prosperous San Francisco attorney and a prominent Catholic, the last person anyone would suspect of a brutal crime. But Dooher, a paragon of success and a master of all he touches, is about to be indicted for murder.

Charged with savagely killing his own wife, Dooher is fighting for his reputation and his life in a high-profile case that is drawing dozens of lives into its wake from former spouses to former friends, from a beautiful, naïve young attorney to a defense lawyer whose own salvation depends on getting his client off.

Now, as the trial builds to a crescendo, as evidence is sifted and witnesses discredited, as a good cop tries to pick up the pieces of his shattered life and a D.A. risks her career, the truth about Mark Dooher is about to explode. For in a trial that will change the lives of everyone it touches, there is one thing that no one knows until it is much too late…

Publishers Weekly

Perhaps it's because he's one of the few writers of legal thrillers who isn't a lawyer that Lescroart has brought so much more to this novel and its predecessors (A Certain Justice, etc.) than simply courtroom dazzlethough the legal infighting here is first-rate. Mark Dooher, head of a high-powered San Francisco law firm, pushing 50 and tired of his alcoholic wife, is smitten with beautiful law student Christina Carrera. He begins a subtle campaign to woo her, revealing himself to readers ("the little compliments, the kindnesses") as manipulative, but believably so. When Dooher's wife is murdered in an apparent burglary, SFPD detective Abe Glitsky finds enough odd clues to press for a murder charge against Dooher. With Dooher's best friend, Wes Farrell, leading the defense (with Christina as second chair), the cold-blooded attorney takes on the police, the court and various hostile witnesses. What raises the dramamarred only by a perfunctory endingto an unusually sophisticated level is not just the crackling legal action but also infusions of the melting-pot tensions of San Francisco, old-fashioned church politics (including a priest suffering a nervous breakdown after a murderer's confession) and strong secondary characters (a feisty rape counselor, a canny archbishop, a smart and ambitious Vietnamese detective). Guilt pervades the plot: Glitsky's over his wife's slow death from cancer; Farrell's over a less-than-stellar law career; Christina's over an old abortion. Only Dooher can say, "I don't feel any guilt", though he'll be joined by the many thriller fans who won't feel a twinge about spending a few hours with this robust and intelligent entertainment. BOMC selection