HARD EVIDENCE

The shaggy lawyer/bartender of The Vig (1991) tries his hand at blockbuster courtroom drama—in an engaging crossover novel written with both eyes firmly on Scott Turow. At first, Dismas Hardy doesn't see any connection between his new job as an assistant D.A. and the severed hand he found inside a shark captured by San Francisco's Steinhart Aquarium. But when the rest of the body belonging to computer zillionaire Owen Nash turns up murdered, and Hardy is deputized to deal with Nash's daughter Celine and his lawyer Ken Farris, he expects his friends in court—especially Judge Andy Fowler, his first wife's father—to recommend him for the prosecution of May Shinn, the Japanese call-girl Nash had recently asked to marry him. No such luck: he's assigned second seat to experienced homicide prosecutor Elizabeth Pullios—and then, before the case can even come to trial, the fireworks begin: Andy Fowler is unexpectedly assigned to hear the case; Hardy forces Andy to resign from the bench when he learns that he posted May's bail; May produces an airtight alibi; and the D.A. abruptly throws out the case and fires Hardy for knowing that Andy was another of May's clients with long- term romantic designs that give him a perfect motive. Reeling from the range of his entanglements in the case—he discovered the first evidence of foul play; the judge-turned-defendant is his ex-father-in- law—Hardy escapes to Hawaii with his pregnant wife and her daughter, but ends up, inevitably, as Andy's counsel, defending his first criminal case against fire-eating Pullios and an outraged judiciary determined to make a meal of their fallen colleague. As in Presumed Innocent, the courtroom battles, once they're joined, are so keen that you almost forget there's a mystery too. But Lescroart's laid-back, soft-shoe approach to legal intrigue is all his own. (First printing of 50,000)