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John Lescroart is one of those writers who is able to grab the reader's imagination with his first sentence: "Only four minutes remained in sixteen-year-old Laura Wright's life as she came out of the bathroom of the small apartment on Beaumont Street in San Francisco." From this high-pitched beginning, his new book, THE SECOND CHAIR, wends its way through a zigzag plot that is littered with dead bodies, blind alleys, red herrings, courtroom drama and a denouement sure to keep pulses racing.
Andrew North is the privileged son of rich self-centered parents: Linda, his biological mother, and Hal, his stepfather. Andrew, a popular high school student, and his girlfriend were the leads in the school play and had made a habit of rehearsing in the evenings at the home of their teacher, Mr. Mooney. One fatal night, when Andrew goes for a walk to rehearse his lines, Mooney and the ingénue are murdered.
Each time the police question Andrew, they assure the family that he is not a suspect. Thus, he talks to them without the benefit of counsel. He and his parents know he's innocent, but approximately two months into the investigation, he is arrested. Nobody is more surprised by this event than Andrew.
When the Norths finally contact Amy Wu, an attorney they had used years before when Andrew had gotten into a small scrape, Andrew was being held at the Youth Guidance Center (YGC) charged with double murder. He was booked into juvenile hall because, although he was seventeen, for the purposes of this arrest he was still technically not considered an adult … yet. When Amy gets to the house and begins asking the elementary questions a lawyer called into a double murder case always asks, she is appalled by the naiveté the parents had displayed in the pre-arrest of their son. These successful, rich and presumably savvy parents "knew" Andrew was innocent and believed that he was lucky to have been out of the house when the murders occurred. Their belief in their son's innocence could cost him his life. Up until he was taken away in handcuffs, the family felt that none of them had to worry.
After listening to all of the reasons and rationalizations the parents had devised in their attempt to "protect" Andrew and convince themselves that their son was innocent, Wu, who is flabbergasted by what she is hearing, asks why the police decided to arrest him two months later after talking to him several times. Linda explains that in the early stages of the investigation, the police asked if they owned any guns. Hal responded in the affirmative, but was unable to locate it. The police later found a casing in Andrew's car --- the gun had disappeared, but it was the same caliber as the murder weapon.
Amy Wu is an associate of Dismis Hardy, Lescroart's "regular attorney." THE SECOND CHAIR comes on the heels of his last blockbuster, THE FIRST LAW, in which David Freeman, Hardy's mentor, is murdered and the people who truly loved him "took care to see that 'justice' was carried out." All of them are still reeling from what they did and are trying as best they can to cope with his death. Each in his/her own way is haunted by the part they played in making sure his killer paid with his life. Amy is not doing too well in the emotional stability arena, either. Her father died a few months ago and she is drinking too much, indulging in one night stands and has cut herself off from any help or support friends might offer.
Nevertheless, she takes the case. Based on her belief that all or most of her clients are guilty, her approach to a case is to plead down and get as little time as possible for the perp. In Andrew's case she takes the same route and rationalizes a defense of sorts in her mind. She will do what she does best: fight for the best deal she can get, and then hope she can sell it to the Norths and then to Andrew. Her plan is to have him plead guilty to the murders, even if he is innocent, as he claims. If he agrees, he will get eight years of incarceration as a youth offender. If he goes to trial, it will be as an adult and he could go to prison for life. The cliffhanging tension while Andrew, his family, Wu and Hardy try to decide his fate is both heartwrenchingly realistic and perfectly pitched.
THE SECOND CHAIR is a compelling novel. It is timely and not so far fetched that readers won't identify with the painful situation facing the characters. John Lescroart brings to the courtroom thriller a mix of anecdotes that explain the law, an ensemble of characters who are fully limned and struggle with the human problems that beset all of us. The ability to shape and reshape them lends verisimilitude, which allows them to mature. This is Lescroart's fourteenth book and it is clearly one of his best. He is such an accomplished storyteller that a reader can pick up any of his books in or out of sequence and miss none of the nuances between his characters or get lost in a panoply of references to earlier novels.
This author crafts his tales with due diligence, and that is what makes his work stand tall among the plethora of lawyer-writers whose books line shelves everywhere. This one is a keeper!
--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
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