The Hunter

A lot of people weren't pleased when John Lescroart started writing a series about Wyatt Hunt, a San Francisco private investigator. After all, his Dismas Hardy/Abe Glitzsky books are so imminently satisfying who else could we want to know about?

I like Wyatt Hunt. I like the interconnections between the characters in both series. I like the acknowledgement that Dismas and Abe are aging, their lives are changing and settling down, and it might be time to tell some new stories. Since this is one of my all-time favorite series, I was happy to see that rather than letting the series wander off into insignificance and no fun, Lescroart expanded his world a bit, reached out into other characters with other stories. This keeps all of the show more characters and their stories fresh and prevents Lescroart of going the way of so many series writers who run out of ideas and turn their characters into caricatures (once again, Patricia Cornwell, I'm looking at you).

The Hunter is the third book in the Wyatt Hunt series and Mr. Lescroart is hitting his stride with these characters. He's always been one of the most talented of the writers of crime fiction combined with courtroom drama and has always been one of my personal favorite writers so I tend to like everything he writes, but can also acknowledge ups and downs. The Hunter is one of the best books he's written lately. Great characters, complicated and interesting plot that weaves together the protagonist's attempt to understand what happened to his mother and some 35-40 years of other interconnected murders. Once he throws Jonestown into the mix he's off to the races with you right along with him.

I recently read A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres. Ms. Scheeres got access to all of the newly released documents on Jonestown and wrote a book that fundamentally changed my thinking about not just Jonestown, but about other similar gatherings of people of different kinds of faith. She elevated her subjects from the dregs of gullible ignorance to real breathing people with fundamental values and beliefs and hopes to make a better world. It was pretty breathtaking. It also gave me a look into how much The People's Temple was woven into the world of San Francisco and its politics during the brief part of the seventies before the trips to Guyana became permanent and the end became a forgone conclusion. Lescroart's inclusion of this bit of San Francisco history interlaced with the more expected crime fiction makes this book. As always Lescroart's San Francisco is real, palpable, and set within its rich historic context.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommended highly to fans of crime fiction. Read this. You won't be disappointed. show less

This was a fun, fascinating and well-written murder mystery, with one of the murders having occurred 40 years before the current time. And the book featured a very well-done description and narrative of issues faced by an adopted person who learns in mid-life some shocking things about his birth parents, things that led to his adoption.

I rounded up to 4 stars because I'm a John Lescroart fan boy, and I've read all or most of the books in this series, so I know the characters and this filled in a lot of background for one of the lesser-known regulars, the investigator used by Dismas Hardy.

The story was fairly interesting, including a tie-in with Jim Jones and his group, but by itself, the story wasn't that exciting. Only the characters and the writing of John Lescroart made it interesting.

I'd recommend reading the first two book in the series first so you'll know all the players. If you already read them, then you will want to read this one regardless of what I say.

This book is definitely not as good as any of the Dismas Hardy series, but still a good read. Wyatt is a good character, and I like the psychological angle this book takes around his background and how he copes with it. The crime, and what we learn regarding its protagonist in this case, is pretty thin and not a really satisfying conclusion for the story. I ended up at four stars based on how much I really like Lescroart in general and first two thirds of the book, which is pretty exciting.

Standard suspense/thriller fare. Lescroart hits a few points too repetitively but the resolution is believable and the action is realistic rather than super-human.

It was good to read about Wyatt Hunt's mysterious past. He was adopted at age 6 after being in foster care for a few years. His birth mother was murdered when he was three and his father was charged with the crime but twice had hung juries and so was set free with the stigma over his head. He disappeared from Wyatt's life. Wyatt, after receiving an anonymous text asking about his mother's death, decides that it is time to find out the truth about his past. He never imagined how much the would affect his life and the lives of those around him.

excellent private investigator thriller, with unexpected twists