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The title BETRAYAL was a brilliant choice on so many levels as John Lescroart brings back his famous San Francisco defense attorney Dismas Hardy in what could be Hardy’s most labyrinthine and deadly case of his career. Dismas is asked to take over the cases of an attorney who has been missing for six months. One of the cases involves 2nd Lt Evan Scholler, a National Guard reservist who has been convicted of murdering Ron Nolan, a senior official with Allstrong Security. As Dismas prepares to file an appeal to overturn the conviction, he finds that there are more deaths involved than Ron Nolan’s and to prove his client innocent he places himself and his wife in mortal danger. Lescroart writes with a deft hand that takes the reader to the very edge of realty. Though fiction, BETRAYAL describes a situation that is so probable that it is unnerving. The story of Lt Scholler, returning with near-fatal injuries and ending up being tried for a murder he can’t remember, takes the reader from the dusty and dangerous streets of Bagdad to the courtrooms of California via an over-crowded and antiquated Walter Reed Army Hospital. With current news topics about private contractors, such as Halliburton, the conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital; and the daily suicide bombings in Iraq, Lescroart has plenty to choose from in writing this novel. He has chosen to combine them all in what is his best novel to date. The reader is shown how the soldiers sent to Iraq may be facing more than harm from the declared enemy abroad. Lines become blurred between contractors hired to do legitimate work, and those hiring themselves out as mercenaries, or hitmen. Combine this with the tribal feuds of the area, the overwhelming flood of injured soldiers passing through an antiquated national hospital, and the FBI trying to protect US national security and you have a lethal cocktail. The reader will never look at news of a war-zone the same again. BETRAYAL is a must-read.
Reviewed by Ginger K. W. Stratton, January 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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