Crime Fiction Writer John Lescroart: POISON, a Dismas Hardy Book

We read this book for our January 2025 book selection.

This post is in two parts: PART 1 is information for anyone interested in this book.

PART 2 (identified by a warning barrier) is information for those who have read the book — expect spoilers about the book, and including any comments made about the book in the comments area.

Blurb for Poison

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.

What to Expect With This Book

List of Characters for This Book

About the Author!

John Lescroart (/lɛsˈkwɑː/) who will be 77 on January 14, 2025, 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.)

MORE About the Author!

A blogger’s great interview with John in 2010.

John Lescroart’s website.

A really interesting interview with John LesCroart can be viewed below.

John is blunt, and entertaining. He is interviewed by another writer of legal thrillers, William Bernhardt. Afterward, I went back to read the first sentence of our book – you’ll find out why from the interview, as well as learn some startling statistics about book publishing today compared to when he started in 1986. BTW, this interview was done in March, 2021. Also, this link begins at a point, past about 12 minutes of stuff that has nothing to do with John. It jumps over to the actual interview. The actual interview is about 32 minutes long.

Here is how our 14 readers reacted: with a resulting average score of 83. As you can see, though, opinions ranged from a grade of “A” (93) to a grade of “D” (68).

This is just a reminder that our group’s average scores are very useful if HIGH (87 or above) or if they are LOW (73 and below; with such group scores a new reader could have a very high likelihood of enjoying books that are 87 or above and moreso the higher the score. Likewise, a new reader could have a very low chance of liking books that are 73 or lower and even less chance of enjoyment with books scored less than 73. You can rely on this paragraph.

Scores in the middle range (74-86) are unreliable because normally you cannot see the individual scores that composed the average. For example, the Poison group average is 83.

If that meant everyone gave it an 82, 83, or 84, then we could say it is a solid B- book and if I really liked the blurb, maybe I would enjoy the book. BUT…

If that meant that the 83 was based on a wide range of scores – which is the actual case with the book below – then you can’t rely on the average score, unless maybe you know the individual scores and you trust the reading tastes of one of the individuals; of course, then the group average was not any help. Again, scores from roughly 74 – 86 do not indicate anything by way of recommendation.

At the bottom of the chart are at least 12 recent books. The darker the green, the more likely (no guarantees) a new reader will like it.

Add to the Discussion About the Book!

Want to add an opinion about the book? Share comments you would have said if you been at the meeting?

(1) for those who did not attend the meeting, and

(2) for those who did attend. Please consider writing some of your thoughts about the book, even if you expressed them in the meeting. This helps provide a “report” to those who could not attend.

Please write your book reactions (and score if not reported above) where it says “LEAVE A REPLY,” below. You can also [nicely] comment on any other participant’s thoughts.