The Mercy Rule

February 22, 2010
Lescroart's multilayered 1999 novel, the fifth to feature San Francisco bartender-turned-barrister Dismas Hardy, is a heady brew of courtroom drama, hot topics (assisted suicide), and family dynamics among richly drawn characters. David Colacci, the primary narrator of the series, brings back his renditions of Hardy's easygoing but always intelligent voice and his police lieutenant Abe Glitsky's hoarse delivery, along with introducing a cast of new characters. New interpretations include a gruff, halting speech pattern for fishmonger Salvatore Russo, an Alzheimer's sufferer whose death triggers the plot; the calm, almost beatific voice of Sal's son, Graham, who's charged with Salvatore's murder; and the fluty, aristocratic murmurs of Sal's socially prominent, long-since-remarried ex-wife. Though the author may go a little too far in placing the heroic Hardy in final jeopardy, Colacci maintains the perfect pace throughout, moving us through the thrills to a smooth and satisfying conclusion. A Dell paperback.

August 31, 1998
For a topical thriller from an established talent, Lescroart's 10th (after Guilt) is curiously flat. Maybe it's the cliche factor--which surfaces fast, when San Francisco lawyer Dismas Hardy (back from The 13th Juror) gets a call from Graham Russo, who's accused of killing his ailing father, Sal, and responds with a hackneyed riff on the Reluctant Lawyer theme. It turns out that Russo is sleeping with his arresting officer, Inspector Sarah Evans, who thinks he's innocent--even though every time he's asked a new set of questions, his old answers are revealed to be lies. It seems Sal had friends in high places (among them federal judge Mario Giotti); because his death appears to be a mercy killing, the DA is not going to press charges. But Russo is indicted anyway, and he wants Hardy to ignore a mercy killing defense and prove his total innocence. This is when the plot should take off, but it doesn't. The key questions are clear: Do lawkeepers have the moral obligation to enforce what they believe to be a bad law? Is a lawyer supposed to do what the client wants, or what will get the client off? No sooner does Lescroart pose these questions than he forgets about them, widening his lens to an angle that reduces everything to the same scale. There are many small successes--the courtroom scenes are little masterpieces of battlefield maneuvering--but, because the book's only overarching concerns are plot-related (Hardy's reluctance, Russo's affair, Russo's innocence), the added level of depth and concern that would create a truly great courtroom thriller are absent. BDD audio.