The Second Chair (Dismas Hardy) | John Lescroart

The Second Chair (Dismas Hardy) | John Lescroart | Deal Breaker

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The Second Chair (...

	The Second Chair (Dismas Hardy) John Lescroart Signet, 2004 - 624 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In the latest of his acclaimed novels featuring Dismas Hardy, John Lescroart skillfully and subtly weaves together a story of a privileged youth on trial for murder, and an entire city on the brink of panic, taking this popular series to new heights of stylish suspense.

Terrific Book

I thought this book would be a very long legal trial, but it wasn't, and I enjoyed it very, very much. It had me turning the pages as fast as I could, and was very difficult to put down.

Deal Breaker

This books starts with a murder. The suspect: a teenage boy who does his best too look and act guilty. Because he's a juvenile, he can be saved from LWOP (Life without Parole), if he pleads guilty to a double murder.

Everyone thinks this is a great idea. The perp will be out at the age of 25. There is no long trial and the DA gets convictions on two murders. Everyone except the suspect who at the last minute refuses the deal, because he insists that while he might be a creepy kid, he didn't kill two people.

Now, things get going! That's the beauty of this book. You never quite know what's coming next.

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A minor observation

This book begins and ends as a perfectly competent, trial-centered mystery thriller. The plot is like a finely made cuckoo clock. Once wound up, it clanks and whirrs, doors open up at just the right time and things pop into sight exactly when they should. In a book that is a part of a better than average series, it is well and good that they should do so.

However, the heart of the book is not given to the series protagonists, Dismas (named after the "good thief" on the cross beside Jesus) Hardy and Abe Glitsky, but to a young lawyer named Amy Wu. Ms. Wu is very bright and very competent, so bright and so competent that she makes thoroughly boneheaded errors, one after another, in entirely convincing ways. The middle of the book is given to Ms. Wu's slow realization that she has made a mess of things and her attempts to crawl out of the pit she has dug for herself. This is not the stuff of a well-constructed mystery. This is, rather, something that looks very like--dare I say it?--literature.

A couple of hundred pages of this 454 page book are more like a novel than a mystery story. Overall, this has a slightly negative effect on the mystery story, hence the four stars. But it also gives me hope that Lescroart has something good, something really good in him that someday he might put down on paper.

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My first Lescroart

Fairly good. Suspense is maintained, though perhaps drawn out too long. And the characterizations of the main players are well done, plus there's some sharp, witty dialogue.

But the ending seems to be written for Hollywood, garishly melodramatic. And I'm not one who usually can predict endings (my wife can), but in this one I could see where the plot (the pattern and motives for the killings) was heading from about the midpoint of the novel--tho I didn't know the identity of the killer, which seemed to come out of the blue.

I'll probably try another Lescroart.

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You've got to believe in the kid

Another lawyer/cop book which was enjoyable. I liked The Vig better but this is still a good story about a teen accused of a double murder and what it takes to prove that he did (or didn't) commit the crimes. I wanted to read some of this author's older books because he has a new one coming out in February that I want to read. I figured some background knowledge might help me with the new book.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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