The Hunt Club

The author of the
New York Times
bestselling novels featuring Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky brings a new hero into the fold….

At first, The Hunt Club had a membership of one: private investigator Wyatt Hunt. Since then, others have joined, both on and off the official payroll. Their common interest is obtaining justice—one way or another. But they don't mind having a little fun along the way, and that's exactly what they're doing one late-spring night at a San Francisco bar….

One of them is missing the festivities, though. Homicide inspector Devin Juhle has just caught a major case: the shooting death of a sixty-three-year-old federal judge and his twentysomething mistress. While Juhle works, Hunt plays, hooking up with TV star and legal analyst Andrea Parisi—once he escorts her safely home and sobers her up, that is.

But before Hunt knows it, Juhle's case will be of great interest to the members of The Hunt Club. Especially to Hunt himself. Not just because Andrea's card was found in the wallet of one of the victims, but because just hours after their first romantic encounter, she disappears….

“ENTERTAINING.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

“Lescroart guides the reader skillfully through the maze of clues and suspects, providing a satisfactory conclusion for all.”

—
Orlando Sentinel

“[Hunt's] child-services background gives him the ability to read motives in surprisingly insightful ways.”

—
Booklist

“A carefully crafted police procedural…an explosive conclusion.”

—
Lansing State Journal

“Longtime Lescroart fans can relax: These pals are at least as interesting and enterprising as Hardy/Glitsky…. Most readers will agree that it's a great combination, both on the job and on the page.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Grisham and Turow remain the two best-known writers in the genre. There is, however, a third novelist at work today who deserves to be considered alongside Turow and Grisham. His name is John Lescroart.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

“What separates Lescroart from the usual courtroom novelist is his characters…. They tend to come alive as people and not just action figures.”

—
Winston-Salem Journal

Praise for John Lescroart's Previous Novels

The Motive

“Surpasses anything Grisham ever wrote and bears comparison with Turow.”

—
The Washington Post

“Unfolds like a classic
Law & Order.
”

—
Entertainment Weekly

The Second Chair

“Lescroart gives his ever-growing readership another spellbinder to savor.”

—
Library Journal

The First Law

“With his latest, Lescroart again lands in the top tier of crime fiction.”

—
Publishers Weekly

The Oath
A
People
Page-Turner

“A TERRIFIC CRIME STORY.”

—
People

“Hardy and Glitsky are like good wine, improving with time.”

—
The Orlando Sentinel

The Hearing

“A SPINE-TINGLING LEGAL THRILLER.”

—Larry King,
USA Today

Nothing But the Truth

“RIVETING…ONE OF LESCROART'S BEST TALES YET.”

—
Chicago Tribune

The Mercy Rule

“WELL WRITTEN, WELL PLOTTED, WELL DONE.”

—Nelson DeMille

Guilt

“BEGIN
GUILT
OVER A WEEKEND…. If you start during the workweek, you will be up very, very late, and your pleasure will be tainted with, well, guilt.”

—
The Philadelphia Inquirer

A Certain Justice

“A West Coast take on
The Bonfire of the Vanities
…richly satisfying.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“A gifted writer…. I read him with great pleasure.”

—Richard North Patterson

The 13th Juror

“FAST-PACED…sustains interest to the very end.”

—
The Wall Street Journal

Hard Evidence

“ENGROSSING…compulsively readable, a dense and involving saga of big-city crime and punishment.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

Dead Irish

“Full of all the things I like. Lescroart's a pro.”

—Jonathan Kellerman

The Suspect

The Motive

The Second Chair

The First Law

The Oath

The Hearing

Nothing but the Truth

The Mercy Rule

Guilt

A Certain Justice

The 13th Juror

Hard Evidence

The Vig

Dead Irish

Rasputin's Revenge

Son of Holmes

Sunburn

A SIGNET BOOK

SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL,
England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2,
Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria
3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi-110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany,
Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition.

ISBN: 978-1-1011-9158-3

Copyright © The Lescroart Corporation, 2006
Excerpt from
The Suspect
copyright © The Lescroart Corporation, 2007 All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
      The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

To Justine Rose Lescroart,
daughter of my heart

“You think you know yourself until things start happening, until you lose the insulation of normality.”

—Robert Wilson,
A Small Death in Lisbon