That’s at the Manchester Public Library in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts.
Natives call it MBTS or mostly just “Manchester.”
[This page updated 12/29/24]
Next Meeting: Friday January 31, 10:30 am.
Meeting Location: Inside the library AND via Zoom (Hybrid Meeting)
Zoom details will be provided via email. Be sure to subscribe to our meeting notices to Zoom links – and other club news.
Our first book for 2025(!) is Poison by John Lescroart (2018) and that is for our January 31 Meeting. This is book #20 out of 22 books in this series featuring Dismas Hardy, ex-cop, ex-bartender and ex-Assistant District Attorney turned defense attorney, and Abe Glitsky, a black, Jewish cop, in San Francisco, California. The series has a few other important continuing characters.
Blurb for This Month’s Book
From the “master of the legal thriller” (Chicago Sun-Times) John Lescroart comes a dramatic family drama in which attorney Dismas Hardy is called on to defend a former client against the accusation of murder.
Dismas Hardy is looking forward to cutting back his work hours as a defense attorney and easing into retirement after recovering from two gunshot wounds. He is determined to spend more time with his family and even reconnect with his distant son, Vincent. But Dismas just can’t stay away from the courtroom for long and soon he is pulled into an intense family drama with fatal consequences.
Grant Carver, the vigorous patriarch of the Carver family and its four-generations owned family business, has been murdered. His bookkeeper Abby Jarvis, whom Hardy had defended on a DUI charge eleven years prior, is the prime suspect after police discover she’s been embezzling funds from the company—but she insists she did not kill her boss.
As he prepares to defend her, Dismas investigates the Carver clan and discovers the dark, twisted secrets within the family. It seems that Abby was not the only one who stood to profit from the company’s $25 million dollar market value. From jealous children to gold-digging girlfriends, Dismas has his work cut out for him in sifting through mud flinging, backstabbing, and accusations of blackmail.
But Dismas not only has to save his client’s life but his own, as it soon becomes clear that someone has a painted a target on his back, too. With Lescroart’s signature “smart, riveting, and utterly compelling” (Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author) prose, this whip smart and nail-bitingly suspenseful thriller will keep you guessing until the very last page.
This Book Fits Within This Type [Sub-Genre] of Crime Fiction:
Legal Thriller, Mystery
What to Expect With This Book
–> It has roughly 300 pages.
–> It has 41 relatively medium-length chapters.
–> Ideally try to start reading in the middle of January. Anything to maximize recall for the discussion on the last Friday of January!
We invite you to read the book and join us to discuss it on Friday, January 31!
About the Author!
John Lescroart (/lɛsˈkwɑː/) who will be 77 on January 14, is known for his series of legal and crime thriller novels featuring the characters Dismas Hardy, Abe Glitsky, and Wyatt Hunt. His novels have sold more than 12 million copies, have been translated into 22 languages in more than 75 countries, and 18 of his books have been on the New York Times bestseller list.
Lescroart was born in Houston, Texas, and graduated from Junípero Serra High School in San Mateo, California (Class of 1966). He earned a B.A. in English with Honors at UC Berkeley in 1970.
Before becoming a full-time writer in 1994, Lescroart was a self-described “Jack of all trades,” who worked as a word processor for law firms as well as a bartender, moving man, house painter, editor, advertising director, computer programmer, and fundraising executive.
Through his 20s, he was also a full-time singer-songwriter-guitarist, and performed under the name Johnny Capo, with Johnny Capo and his Real Good Band.
He is an original founding member of the group International Thriller Writers.
Lescroart is the author of thirty novels (his latest, The Missing Piece, was published by Atria in March of 2022), nineteen of which have been New York Times Bestsellers. Libraries Unlimited has named John among “The 100 Most Popular Thriller and Suspense Authors.” His short stories appear in many anthologies. His short story “The Adventure of the Giant Rat of Sumatra” was selected for the 1998 edition of Houghton Mifflin’s The Best American Mystery Stories, edited by Sue Grafton. Additionally, his short story “Dunkirk” appeared in the 2015 Anthony and Silver Falchion Award winning anthology, In the Company of Sherlock Holmes.
John’s first novel, Sunburn, won the San Francisco Foundation’s Joseph Henry Jackson Award for best novel by a California author; Dead Irish, The 13th Juror and The Keeper were nominees for the Shamus, Anthony and Silver Falchion Best Mystery/Crime Novel, respectively; The 13th Juror is included in the ITW publication “100 Must-Read Thrillers Of All Time.” Hard Evidence appears in “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Ultimate Reading List.” Guilt was a Readers Digest Select Edition choice. The Motive was an Audie Finalist of the Audio Publishers Association. The Mercy Rule, Nothing but the Truth, The Suspect, and The Fall have been major market Book Club selections. The Suspect was also the 2007 One Book Sacramento choice, and the American Author’s Association chose it as its Book of the Year. The Ophelia Cut, Betrayal, and A Plague of Secrets were each Top Five selections of Strand Magazine’s “Books of the Year.” Several of John’s books have been Main Selections of one or more of the Literary Guild, Mystery Guild, and Book of the Month Club.
An “Update” on his website indicates that his 2022 book, The Missing Piece, will be the last in the series. He wrote:
When I finished the latest book, THE MISSING PIECE, I realized that I had come to a natural stopping place, my 30th published book (19 of which have been New York Times bestsellers), and I decided to take a little time off and wait for the muse to tap me on the shoulder. At about the same time, the Pandemic dropped by to spend some time, and my children were beginning to have children of their own, truly a magical addition to the life experience, which is not to say they did not take up their fair share of energy. And, of course, because I was not working to a deadline, the open space invited travel—the East Coast, Sicily, Australia, Hawaii, more East Coast—in short, the month or two that I stopped writing had turned into an extended sabbatical. I felt no great urgency to revisit my characters or their settings. I felt like I had “done” San Francisco and was pleased with my work. With every day that went by, I felt that I had finished my work, and was happy to leave things there as they lay.
John is the recipient of the International Thriller Writers’ Silver Bullet Award to recognize outstanding and meritorious achievement in the pursuit of literacy and the love of reading. In that vein, among many other charitable contributions, John has endowed the perennial $5,000 Maurice Prize for excellence in long-form fiction at the University of California at Davis. Of the first fifteen writers to have won this award, ten have gone on to become published authors. Also, the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society presented John with its Award of Merit to recognize the “intimate knowledge of San Francisco” portrayed in his novels; finally, both the California State Senate and California State Assembly have presented John with their Award of Merit and Certificate of Recognition, respectively.
A singer, songwriter, and musician, John founded Crow Art Records and produced David Grisman alum Joe Craven (“Django Latino”), Bel Air Hotel and Peninsula Hotel longtime house pianist Antonio Castilla de la Gala (“Date Night”), as well as two CDs of his own original music (“As The Crow Flies” and “Whiskey and Roses”).
Finally, John loves to cook. His original recipes have appeared in Gourmet Magazine and in the cookbook “A Taste of Murder.” (He also wrote the forward to Francine Brevetti’s paean to the famous San Francisco eatery Fior d’Italia entitled The Fabulous Fior: 100 Years in an Italian Kitchen.)
His website.
About Our Mystery Book Group
DO YOU LIKE MYSTERY BOOKS? We welcome your participation with us. Our monthly Friday meetings focus on the mystery book of the month. The group helps to create the annual reading list each June. (Click to see this year’s book list.) When we gather, we enjoy each other and the varying views that each person shares, recognizing that there are many genres and tastes in mystery books, crime books, thrillers, etc. It’s just fun!
WANT MORE TO READ AND DISCUSS, MORE THAN ONE BOOK A MONTH? In addition to our regular end of the month meeting, we often have one or more “sub-groups” that are ongoing, reading through a series of books by one author.
AND THERE’S MORE! As we like to say, “We are more than a book club.” For example:
- Authors as a guest for Q&A, most recently– Bruce Robert Coffin in June of 2023 and Daniel Palmer in November 2022,
- A recent Gloucester Harbor cruise on the Ardelle. An annual June backyard picnic,
- Field trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (it started with a book we read in which the museum’s famous heist was featured),
- Two Spenser Tours of Boston based on the Robert Parker books,
- Outings to movies like – Mr Holmes, Murder on the Orient Express, and Knives Out.
- Field trip to the Poe Statue in Boston,
- Lunch at the Agawam Diner,
- A Transcendental Murder mystery book field trip to Concord, MA.
- Frequent local restaurant luncheons following the regular book club meeting
- No agenda Zoom Lunch hour socials – a fill-in idea during the Pandemic
Click here for ongoing Mystery Book Club resources and helps. Quick link to current list of books for the year (September through August).
A few pictures from a recent meeting (8/30/24) during “announcements” part of the meeting. Thanks to Audrey Carmen (Library Staff)….
A few pictures from an early summer meeting (6/26/24) during “announcements” part of the meeting. Thanks to Carol McKenna….
Our special speaker for Nov 18, 2022: D.J. Palmer – author of various kinds of thrillers (5th from left)
Our club outing on Gloucester Harbor Tours’ Lighthouse Cruise – Saturday August 20, 2022: below – Selena and Mike seated (picture by Leslie)
Our club outing on Gloucester Harbor on the Schooner Ardelle charter – August 25, 2021: below
