Betrayal

Description

New York Times bestselling author John Lescroart presents an ambitious thriller featuring San Francisco defense attorney Dismas Hardy.

“Betrayal  is provocative…a tour de force of a legal thriller.”—The Providence Journal

Dismas Hardy agrees to take an appeal to overturn the murder conviction of National Guard reservist Evan Scholler. Scholler had plenty of reasons for revenge—but as Dismas delves into the case, he begins to uncover a terrible truth that drops him right into the complicated world of government conspiracy, assassination, and betrayal…Praise for Betrayal

“Lescroart dispatches courtroom scenes with crisp efficiency.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
“Easily usurps the latest from Grisham and Turow.”—The Providence Journal-Bulletin

“A great read.”—Booklist

“Extremely satisfying.”—Library Journal

“A first-rate addition to the author’s ongoing series, this should please both longtime readers and new fans.”—Publishers WeeklyJohn Lescroart is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty-five novels including the Dismas Hardy series. He lives in Northern California.

INTRODUCTION
When Dismas Hardy agrees to clean up the caseload of recently disappeared attorney Charlie Bowen, he thinks it will be easy. But one of the cases is far from small-time—the sensational clash between National Guard reservist Evan Scholler and an ex-Navy SEAL and private contractor named Ron Nolan. Two rapid-fire events in Iraq conspired to bring the men into fatal conflict: Nolan’s relationship with Evan’s girlfriend, Tara, a beautiful school-teacher back home in the states, followed by a deadly incident in which Nolan’s apparent mistake results in the death of an innocent Iraqi family as well as seven men in Evan’s platoon. As the murky relationship between the US government and its private contractors plays out in the personal drama of these two men, and the consequences become a desperate matter of life and death, Dismas Hardy begins to uncover a terrible and perilous truth that takes him far beyond the case and into the realm of assassination and treason.

 

ABOUT JOHN LESCROART

John Lescroart is a big believer in hard work and single-minded dedication, although he’ll acknowledge that a little luck never hurts. Now a New York Times bestselling author whose books have been translated into 16 languages in more than 75 countries, John wrote his first novel in college and the second one a year after he graduated from Cal Berkeley in 1970.

The only hitch was that he didn’t even try to publish either of these books until fourteen years later, when finally, at his wife Lisa’s urging, he submitted Son of Holmes to New York publishers—and got two offers, one in hardcover, within six weeks!

But about six years before that first hardcover publication, John’s ambition to become a working novelist began to take shape. At that time, as Johnny Capo of Johnny Capo and His Real Good Band, he’d been performing his own songs for several years at clubs and honky-tonks in the San Francisco Bay Area. On his 30th birthday, figuring that if he hadn’t made it in music by then, he never would, he retired from the music business.

He’d been writing all along, and didn’t stop now, although his emphasis changed from music first, prose second, to the other way around. Within two months of his last musical gig, he finished a novel, Sunburn, that drew on his experiences in Spain. Since John didn’t know anyone in the publishing world, he sent the manuscript to his old high school English teacher, who was not enthusiastic. Fortunately, the teacher left the pages on his bedside table, and his wife picked them up and read them. She loved the book and submitted it in John’s name to The Joseph Henry Jackson Award, given yearly by the San Francisco Foundation for Best Novel by a California author. Much to John’s astonishment, Sunburn beat out 280 other entrants, including Interview with a Vampire, for the prize.

Though Sunburn wasn’t to be published for another four years, and then only in paperback, the award changed John’s approach to writing. He started to think he might make a living as an author, something he’d never previously believed possible for a “regular guy with no connections.” He started paying for his writing habit by working a succession of “day jobs”—everything from a computer programmer with the telephone company, to Ad Director of Guitar Player Magazine, to moving man, house painter, bartender (at the real Little Shamrock bar in San Francisco), legal secretary, fundraising executive, and management consultant writing briefs on coal transportation for the Interstate Commerce Commission!!

John moved to Los Angeles and in the next three years finished three long novels, the last of them featuring a private investigator who shared the name Dismas Hardy (and very little else) with the man who would become John’s well-known attorney/hero. Since he’d gotten Sunburn published without using a literary agent (an old friend had shown it to a secretary at Pinnacle Books in Los Angeles, who bought it), John went on submitting his work to New York over the transom, receiving many kind rejection letters, but no offers. Finally he realized that even if he wasn’t fated to become a commercially successful author, he wanted to be involved in books and literature. So he enrolled in the Masters Program in Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

It was not to be.

While John and his wife, Lisa Sawyer, were preparing that summer to move to New England, he was paying bills by typing technical papers on coal transportation for a consulting firm. Asked by the boss what he thought of the paper, John commented that the argument it made wasn’t very compelling and that it wasn’t very well-written. His boss challenged him: could he do it any better? In a week, John re-wrote the 400-page draft, which went on to win before the ICC. This led to a “day job” offer that John couldn’t refuse. Graduate school fell by the wayside.

But after a year and a half, even a lucrative day job had become a burden. Nothing would do for John by now but to write, but he had little time for writing with his high-paying, career-oriented job. Lisa suggested taking a look at some of the old manuscripts and submitting them—she remembered reading and liking Son of Holmes. How about that one? There was one 14-year-old yellowed and brittle copy of the manuscript left in the world—in the basement of their best man, Don Matheson’s, apartment. Six weeks later, John had his first hardcover book deal.

Over the next seven years, back in Los Angeles again, John and Lisa were finally ready to start their family. During this time, John wrote several screenplays and published three more books while he held down a job as a word processing supervisor at a downtown law firm. He rose each day at 5:30 and went to a room they’d built in their garage, where he wrote four pages of his latest in two hours. Then he worked his nine-to-five, ate a bag lunch, and stayed downtown, typing briefs and pleadings at various other law firms until 10:00 or 11:00 at night.

Finally he was publishing, but he wasn’t making a living. And then in 1989, at the age of forty-one, he took a break to go body-surfing at Seal Beach. The next day, he lay in a Pasadena hospital. From the contaminated sea water where he’d been surfing, he’d contracted spinal meningitis. Doctors gave him two hours to live.

John now looks back on his 11-day battle with death as the turning point in his career. He quit the last of his day jobs to move back to Northern California and to write full-time, with intense focus and a renewed dedication. The resulting books, richer in terms of theme and story, found a devoted readership and propelled him into the elite circle of bestselling authors—only twenty years to overnight success!!

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Attention: There are some plot spoilers in this guide.

In the prologue, Dismas Hardy is depicted playing darts, and the author describes his game in this way: “So Hardy was playing a no-win game. If he hit his mark, it didn’t make him happy; but if he missed, it really ticked him off.” How did this statement preview the events that take place in Betrayal?
 

“When Evan shook Ron Nolan’s hand just outside the headquarters tent, he had an immediate impression of great strength held in check.” What was your initial opinion of Ron Nolan? Did it change as you read the book?
 

Do you know anyone who has served in Iraq, whether in a military position or with an outside contractor? Was their experience similar to that of Evan’s, or Ron’s?
 

Dismas Hardy explains his first name’s origin as “Dismas. The good thief. On Calvary? Next to Jesus?” How does this explanation reflect his personality?
 

“I’m just having a hard time accepting that our slightly different politics have really broken us up,” writes Evan to Tara. Talk about Evan. Was he truly committed to the war effort, or was he ambivalent in some way? How did he change after he was injured?
 

Was Ron’s motivation to meet Tara in person really to help Evan? What do you think Tara saw in Ron? How were Evan and Ron different, and similar?
 

“Suddenly the country’s culture seemed to have shifted to where everybody was afraid to make a stink about anything—it meant they weren’t patriotic.” What does it mean to be a patriot? Who are the patriots in Betrayal?
 

Consider Evan’s trial. If you were in the shoes of Everett Washburn, would you have allowed Evan to take the stand? What do you think the prosecutor’s motivation was for pressing Evan’s case so vigorously? What were some of the injustices Evan faced?
 

Have you ever served on a criminal trial jury? Would you have been swayed by Evan’s testimony?
 

At the end of Chapter 41, when Dismas receives the e-mail correspondence between Jack Allstrong and Ron Nolan and subsequently sends copies of it to the surviving Khalil family members, do you think he knew what could ultimately happen to Allstrong?
 

“Everett. Listen. I can’t believe I beat him with a poker, then shot him in the head, and have no memory of it. I would remember that.” Did you believe Evan was innocent of Ron’s murder? Were you surprised by the book’s last passage?
 

What position do you think the author holds on the Iraq war?
 

Discuss the book’s title. What—or to whom—does betrayal refer?

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