The Hearing (Dismas Hardy Series #7)

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The Barnes & Noble Review
In John T. Lescroart's Nothing but the Truth, Dismas Hardy -- embattled hero of an exemplary series of legal thrillers -- found himself embroiled in a complex murder investigation that gradually illuminated some undiscovered fault lines in his own marriage. In his follow-up appearance, The Hearing, Hardy has regained a tentative sense of marital harmony but must still contend with the chaos and corruption of the outside world. This time out, chaos takes the form of a brutal murder that comes uncomfortably close to Hardy and his inner circle of friends.

The murder victim is Elaine Wager, a brilliant African-American woman and a leading figure in the San Francisco legal community. Elaine was found shot to death in an alley, with a homeless heroin addict crouching above her, smoking gun in hand. This apparently open-and-shut case comes to Hardy's attention for two reasons. First, he discovers that Elaine is the daughter of his closest friend, Homicide Lieutenant Abe Glitsky. Second, the alleged killer turns out to be Cole Burgess, ne'er-do-well brother of yet another longtime friend. Hardy, caught in an irresolvable conflict, wants no part of Burgess's defense. But external circumstances force his hand, and he reluctantly changes his mind.

To begin with, Burgess's taped confession reveals significant inconsistencies and raises a number of inconvenient questions. In addition, District Attorney Sharron Pratt plans to make blatant political use of the killing by pushing, uncharacteristically, for the death penalty. Early on, Hardy makes a crucial strategic decision and throws all his efforts into avoiding a jury trial by winning decisively in the preliminary hearing. He knows his only serious chance lies in offering the presiding magistrate a plausible -- and provable -- alternative culprit. With that in mind, he launches his own independent investigation into Elaine Wager's death.

What follows is a hugely entertaining, occasionally improbable courtroom thriller in which Hardy -- together with Abe Glitsky and a host of associates old and new -- follows a trail of venality and violence from the bars and bedrooms of San Francisco's bottom feeders to the inner circles of the city's political elite. It's all great fun, and the furious melodrama acquires added depth through Lescroart's carefully shaded characterizations and his ongoing concern with the various ways people handle -- and sometimes fail to handle -- the large and small problems of everyday life. If you haven't encountered Lescroart before, by all means do so now. The Hearing is a first-rate, high-adrenaline narrative that offers a number of complex pleasures and marks Lescroart as the best courtroom novelist this side of Scott Turow. (Bill Sheehan)

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).

Bookpage

The Hearing will be an irresistible read for...all those who appreciate a well-crafted courtroom drama.

Publishers Weekly

Another satisfying, character-driven legal thriller will be happily embraced by new and longtime fans of master plot-weaver Lescroart (The 13th Juror). Former San Francisco cop and current defense attorney Dismas Hardy's latest assignment pits him against his rival, D.A. Sharron Pratt, whose popularity in the polls is slipping. Although averse to murder cases, Hardy tries to help an acquaintance by defending heroin addict Cole Burgess, who is accused of murdering Assistant D.A. Elaine Wager, the popular daughter of a deceased female senator. What Hardy doesn't know (nor does anyone else) is that Wager's father is Hardy's best friend, Lt. Abe Glitsky of SFPD homicide. Abe overreacts by sweating Dismas's client into a coerced confession; under media pressure for her New Age approach to criminal justice, Pratt arms for re-election by calling for the death penalty, handling the grand jury hearing along with her chief assistant and sometime lover, Gabriel Torrey. Meanwhile, Dismas's mentor, brilliant defense attorney David Freeman, chances across evidence that may link a city official to Dash Logan, an ambulance-chasing lawyer known for his scams. Abe, suspended for leaking Cole's confession, begins to doubt Coles's guilt and decides to take on the D.A. in order to track down the real killer. Lescroart brilliantly sets scenes in the hearing phase that allow credible leeway for courtroom pyrotechnics later on. The richness and diversity of the large cast neither slows the pace nor confuses the narrative, as even minor characters take on memorable presence and depth. Readers will savor the mounting tension and the many twists and turns along the way to the surprise ending. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In this sixth offering in the series and the follow-up to Nothing but the Truth, attorney Dismas Hardy not only defends confessed murderer Cole Burgess but is forced to confront the fallibility of his friend, Abe Glitsky, chief of the San Francisco Police Department's homicide division. Burgess, a heroin addict, is found near the lifeless body of a prominent female attorney, unable to remember the events that brought him there. Lescroart tantalizes readers with a tightly constructed plot in which Hardy and Glitsky track crime and political corruption to an unexpected source. The author deftly continues to build upon the personal and professional relationships among his ensemble cast, adding a new, featured player in the person of legal secretary Treya Ghent. The concluding chapters employ this strong foundation, hewn of plot and character, as a stage on which to present a powerful lesson in courtroom technique. Recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/00.]--Nancy McNicol, Hagaman Memorial Lib., East Haven, CT Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Another seminar in the sociology of criminal justice pits attorney Dismas Hardy (Nothing but the Truth) against his old friend, San Francisco Homicide chief Lt. Abe Glitsky, and pretty much everybody else in sight. The case seems so open-and-shut it's scarcely worth going to trial. The cops find drunk junkie Cole Burgess standing over the body of Elaine Wager, the ex-A.D.A. now a partner in private practice, with the murder weapon in his hand and her jewelry in his pocket. As if the evidence weren't damning enough, Cole obligingly makes a full confession after his interrogator goes off the record to promise him a fix in return for his cooperation. But Burgess's brother-in-law, influential columnist Jeff Elliot, brings him to Hardy's attention, and Dis immediately picks up some strange inconsistencies between his confession and the crime-scene evidence. Declaring himself for the defense in spite of his misgivings, he has no reason to know that Glitsky had his own personal reasons for sweating the suspect within an inch of his sanity: Elaine was the Homicide chief's unacknowledged daughter (though his patrimony, as later events will show, must be the worst-kept secret on the Left Coast). By the time Abe comes to his own senses and cools down, the case has already gone to the prosecution-D.A. Sharron Pratt, desperate to stiffen her soft-on-crime credentials before reelection by demanding the death penalty, and her political mentor Gabriel Torrey, the chief A.D.A. who tears into the case like a starving man into a juicy steak. Can Dis stop the prosecution's runaway train at the preliminary hearing before it goes to a trial he can't possibly win? The answer isn't much more of a surprise than the revelation of who killed Elaine Wager, but Lescroart still lays on the political intrigue as fearlessly as if he were writing exposé journalism rather than courtroom drama.