The Keeper

March 17, 2014
At the start of bestseller Lescroart’s entertaining 18th thriller featuring San Francisco DA Dismas Hardy (after 2013’s The Ophelia Cut), Hardy learns that Katie Chase, wife of sheriff’s deputy Hal Chase, has gone missing. The cops question Hal, who’s later arrested after the discovery of Katie’s body. Hardy agrees to help Hal, and puts newly retired friend Abe Glitsky, once head of homicide in the SFPD, on the case. When Glitsky asks reporter Jeff Elliot for some background on Hal, he gets an earful about inmate deaths at the city jail under the direction of Sheriff Burt Cushing. Glitsky’s best hope is finding the killer, or at least a viable suspect, one of whom could be Patti Orosco, Hal’s rich and beautiful onetime lover, or the unknown man Katie had an affair with. Glitsky shakes the rust off his investigative skills as he chases down every lead. The action builds to a surprising and surprisingly cynical conclusion. Author tour. Agent: Barney Karpfinger, Karpfinger Agency.

May 1, 2014
In the latest Dismas Hardy legal thriller, a missing-persons case gets very complicated, very fast. Hal Chase is a guard at the San Francisco County Jail; one night, while he's out at the airport picking up a relative, his wife, Katie, disappears from their home. Hal is soon picked up by police as the prime suspect. Because Katie was a client of Hardy's marriage-counselor wife, Hal wants Dismas to take his case. Hardy asks his old pal, former homicide cop Abe Glitsky, to pitch in with the investigative legwork. Glitsky soon uncovers some serious holes in Hal Chase's storyhis alibi, for instance, is very shakyand when Katie's body is found, and her husband is arrested for the murder, Dismas wonders if he could possibly be defending a guilty man, while Glitsky wonders if he'll come out of this case alive. Lescroart has occupied a chair at the head table of the legal-thriller society for quite awhile, and this smartly plotted, sharply written novel will do nothing to dislodge him from that lofty perch. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The return of Lescroart's two most popular characters ensures mega-interest for an author whose books have sold 10 million copies and been translated into 22 languages across 75 countries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)