Betrayal (Dismas Hardy) by John Lescroart
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Book Reviews of Betrayal (Dismas Hardy)
Book Review: Bait-and-switch
Summary: 2 Stars
For those of you expecting another great Dismas Hardy/Abe Glitsky novel, don't be fooled by the book jacket. Hardy/Glitzky appear in the first ten pages and then not for another 250-300 pages, reappearing only for the last 110. This book should not really be advertised as featuring these characters. I'm glad I got it from the library or I really would have been unhappy.Book Review: I always enjoy Dismas
Summary: 4 Stars
This one had a little Dismas in the end and the story in the beginning with no Dismas. Still, I always enjoy the characters and have watched their lives change and progress. I read this one on tape and the audio presenter did a good job.Book Review: Fast-Paced, Hard-Hitting Thriller
Summary: 5 Stars
Dismas Hardy has to take over the Evan Scholler case, because Scholler's lawyer has disappeared. Scholler has been accused of killing ex-Navy Seal Ron Nolan. Nolan and Evan became friends in Iraq and Evan told Nolan about his girlfriend Tara back home and once back in the States Nolan courts Tara, even while he's spinning lies and deception to break up the couple.
Nolan is not a nice guy. In Iraq he's shot at and probably killed civilians and he's killed gangbangers in the States and that's not all, he's probably killed a rich Iraqi and his wife. Anyway once he's found dead the police zero in on Evan, who suffered a head injury in Iraq, which causes him partial memory loss. So did he kill Evan? Even he doesn't know, so Dismas Hardy really has his case cut out for him this time.
John Lescroat writes great thrillers and he doesn't disappoint this time. His characters are well drawn and believable and as usual he ends the book with a twist in the tale that you won't see coming.
Book Review: Lescroart's best
Summary: 4 Stars
This is John Lescroart's best mystery and I've read them all. The native Texan and now permanent San Francisco fixture reprises many of his favorite continuing characters, headed by attorney Dismas Hardy and San Francisco P.D. chief of detectives Abe Glitsky, and works them into an intriguing and sometimes shocking four-year tale of murder, intrigue, and money gone berserk tied to a U.S. contractor given free rein over private security operatives in Iraq.
Lt. Evan Scholler, a young San Franciscan whose National Guard squad is haphazardly assigned to Ron Nolan, the contractor's chief field man, almost loses his life due to the mad-dog attitude of the operative's assassin-like reactions. Evan later finds that Nolan turned Scholler's fiancee against him and moved in on her while he was near death in Walter Reed Hospital.
A series of stateside incidents tied to the situation in Iraq triggers a confrontation between Evan and Nolan, and possibly others, winding up with Nolan dying and Scholler tried for his murder. He is found guilty and is sentenced to life.
When three years later an attourney working on Evan's appeal is found missing and his wife suspiciously dies, Dismas and Abe re-enter the story. When the appeal file is turned over to Hardy, the Iraqi connection and the private contractor return to the tale.
The only blemish comes for about thirty pages when Lescroart fails to engage totally believable actions and reactions that he had crafted. But the best-selling author/country-rock composer/singer returns to his solid style of the first 300 pages. Then his tale plays out to a white-knuckled, brainy climax. Excellent reading.
Book Review: A Disappointment after a long wait
Summary: 3 Stars
I absolutely love the Dismas Hardy series by John Lescroart, but after a long wait for this one, I was so disappointed. It's not a bad book (Lescroart couldn't write a bad book if he tried) but if you hold it up against others in the series, it just pales in comparison.
Lescroart is very good at developing recurring characters, even those who aren't central to the plot, who are so interesting you want to spend time with them and get to know them. His dialogue sparkles, and his courtroom scenes are just tours-de-force, like chess games come alive.
What I personally want most of all in a book from this series is lots of Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky, whom I've come to know and admire. Their personal lives, their thoughts, their anxieties, their relationship with each other and with their professional colleagues, friends, wives and families. How they navigate the shark-filled water of San Francisco - the politics, the DA's office, the police department, etc. And, I want to see them team up to outwit the bad guys, because they're just plain SMARTER.
You get almost none of that in this book (yes, Dismas carries the day in the end, but in a manner I found strangely unsatisfying).
In fact, we get almost no Dismas Hardy for a good half of the book. Instead, what we get is a book with good intentions, about a mystery that started in Iraq and spilled over into San Francisco and the Peninsula, spanning years, but introducing characters who are not nearly as interesting as Dismas, Abe, etc.
The book focuses more on the soldier Evan Scholler and the bad guy/mercenary who stole his girlfriend back home, and who ends up murdered.
Unfortunately, Evan Scholler is about the least interesting, least fleshed-out person in the book. His girlfriend runs a close second. I wish I could care what happens to them, but I don't, so much.
I found the final wrapping up of loose ends to be curiously unsatisfying. I don't mind the moral ambiguity, but somehow...something was missing for me (I can't be more specific without posting spoilers).
But it's not just the ending that doesn't satisfy me. I think, with the whole book, I had the sense that Lescroart was - forgive me - phoning it in just a bit. We see very little of Frannie, Dismas's wife. Almost nothing of Moses, Dismas's friend (and Frannie's brother). Almost nothing of Abe's family, and in fact, Abe really doesn't have a lot to do in this book. Wyatt Hunt has a walkon. Abe's law partner Gina doesn't show up at all, nor do any of his associates. It seems like, maybe Lescroart is a bit tired of these characters.
Well, I AM NOT!!!! So, Mr. Lescroart, if you're tired of them, stop writing about them. But if you're going to continue the series, give us what we want - lots of Dismas, Abe, and the cast of characters you've developed so brilliantly during the course of the series.