The Vig (Dismas Hardy #2) by John Lescroart


A solid, more upbeat sequel to Dead Irish

Published in 1990.

Although The Vig is intended to be a stand alone, I would strongly recommend reading the previous Dismas Hardy book entitled Dead Irish to understand some of the self-torment on the part of Dismas Hardy that continues into this book.
For those that have read Dead Irish, this book is not nearly so dark and tortured. Not that it's a comedy since there are plenty of people dying, being set up in criminal schemes and hard choices are faced by many of the main characters. However, the overall climate of the book is much less severe.

As to the general plot - an old colleague of Hardy's named Rusty from the DA's office warns him that a murderer who had threatened to kill them both when he was released was being released soon. Rusty's houseboat becomes the scene of an apparent double murder and it turns out that lots of people had a motive to kill Rusty, including an ex-cop, a jealous husband, the mafia, a prosecutor and the ex-con murderer.

Good, solid read. I give this one 4 stars out of 5.

 Reviewed on April 6, 2006.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Vig by John Lescroart.

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