The Ophelia Cut: A Novel
It’s been a while since pragmatic defense attorney Diz Hardy has been center stage in a Lescroart thriller, but he’s finally back, along with his best friend, San Francisco cop Abe Glitsky. Memories of the so-called Dockside Massacre (The First Law, 2002) remain fresh, however, even six years after the fact, and when a reporter starts digging into the circumstances of the unsolved case, Diz, Abe, and, especially, volatile Moses McGuire, Diz’s brother-in-law, get a tad nervous. Moses, the weak link in the information chain, wants to tell all, but the others vote no. Then Moses’ beautiful 23-year-old daughter is raped, the rapist is murdered, and Moses emerges as the prime suspect. Did he do it? Just as troubling is whether, under pressure of prosecution, he’ll tell what happened on the pier that night. Courtoom dynamics are as well done as ever, but this isn’t as strongly plotted as usual, and although the circumstances of the massacre eventually become clear, readers unfamiliar with First Law could be lost at first. Fans of the series, though, will be thrilled to have Diz back.      HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Lescroart has sold 20 million copies of his previous 23 novels. Numbers to die for. --Stephanie Zvirin