Dead Irish

Rating:
Summary: much better than his later incarnations
Review: Dismas Hardy is an ex-Marine, ex-cop, ex-attorney, ex-Catholic, ex-sharkwalker, ex-husband... Since the death of his 7 month old son, for which he blames himself, he has abandoned his marriage, his career & nearly abandoned all hope--"You could put your hope in anything you wanted, he figured, but to put it in hope itself was just pure foolishness." Now he bartends days at his friend Moses McGuire's bar, plays darts almost obsessively & drinks a few too many Black and Tans and Irish Whiskey's. He's just "skimming over the surface" of life, afraid to test the depths.

But when Moses' brother-in-law is found dead--a young man who Moses' little sister says was a younger version of Hardy before life chewed him up--Hardy ends up investigating whether it was murder or suicide. Gradually, & perhaps inevitably, he begins to care again.

I started one of these books a couple years ago & it didn't grab me, probably because it is a third person private eye novel--a major departure from the rules of the genre. But I found this one for fifty cents & figured I'd give it a shot.

I'm extremely glad that I did.

GRADE: B+

Rating:
Summary: see john grow
Review: Several reviewers have compared this novel unfavourably to later examples of the Dismas Hardy/Abe Glitsky series. But the book is the first of the series, and although it's weaker than later examples, it's a good read, with very sympa characters. And as always, the essence of San Francisco is bottled in some very evocative descriptions. So, fair plot, good characters, excellent setting. Well worth a look, and the later books in the series just get better. Press on.....

Rating:
Summary: Just an average entry in Dismas Hardy series -- slow go
Review: This was our first exposure to author Lescroart and his ex-cop, ex-everything else, Irish bartender, Dismas Hardy. Indeed, we must wait til nearly the mid-point of the book before we learn the personal tragedy that has caused Hardy to largely drop out of life. Meanwhile he leans on his old cop connections to fish out clues and check out suspects as Hardy helps investigate (at the request of the family) the questionable suicide of Eddie Cochran. For half the some 400 pages, the cops, Hardy, and worst, we readers, tire of the efforts to uncover clues and chase potential murderers. When the action finally heats up during the second half, we figure out long before the professionals do the probable villain; fortunately, a couple more killings finally lead to the real bad guy and things get tidied up near the end.

We feel little incentive based on this novel to pursue the rest of this series, although other reviewers suggest it might be one of the weakest in the set. For our money, existential writing is fine, but probably not in a whodunit when the audience is panting for some sort of gripping action to make the pages turn. Apparently this average to mediocre example of the Hardy set might as well be skipped by all but the author's ardent fans.