Today, at 52, he is a successful author with a home in El Macero, a pretty office in downtown Davis, an assistant and the means to hire a driver when he comes to San Francisco for research. He seems genuinely pleased and even surprised by his success. You go from being poor to being rich. He celebrated his 50th birthday by attending the San Francisco Giants' fantasy camp in Arizona. Most of all, he indulges his desire to spin stories.
Every book starts with a simple idea that can be summed up in one sentence.
The call is the one Dismas Hardy gets from his kids' school when his wife isn't there at pickup time. From that starting point, Lescroart weaves a plot that revolves around the unlikely thriller topic of the gasoline additives MTBE and ethanol. His timing proved stranger than most fiction. But he can't really stop himself from working on the next book. The details of the threat that accompanies the snapshot are still to be worked out.