What do You think about Dead Irish (2005)?
Dead Irish provides excellent entertainment, but the language runs amok with foul words too often. The character of Dismas Hardy shows a multi sided character with many endearing traits. The sense of friendship and family loyalty stand tall in the story. Did I pick the correct culprit as the killer, yes, the clues pointed to one character, but Lescroart makes the journey interesting. I always enjoy a different setting and this is in California. I will probably read another book in the Dismas Hardy series.
—Debbie Maskus
One star looks more negative than I really want it to be, since this book wasn't badly written, but the simple truth is I didn't like it, so one star is my only option on Goodreads. I'm giving it two stars on my own blog, since I think of one star as a warning to stay away at all costs; I think on another day or month I might have stuck with this one and gotten into it. I remember almost giving up on Gone Girl right before the first big twist turned it into something riveting. The problem with Dead Irish was, it was boring. So boring that I gave up after 165 pages. Some people would say I shouldn't be reviewing a book I haven't read, but I think that I got far enough into the book to decide whether it's worth continuing. Bear in mind I'm a Lescroart fan, too. I really liked Betrayal and The Hearing, among other books of his, and highly recommend those. I chose Dead Irish because it was the first Dismas Hardy novel, and I have enjoyed the series immensely, but if I had started with this one, I wouldn't have continued, and the loss would have been mine. I think it serves a useful purpose to remind people that even good authors strike out from time to time. Just because a novel isn't a home run doesn't mean you should ban an author from your reading list. And if you're wondering about the baseball metaphor, that's intentional. Dismas Hardy is a big Giants fan. The first death in this book takes place at Candlestick (which tells you how old it is). So give Lescroart a read, but start with The Hearing.
—Russell Atkinson
This book is the first in the Dismas Hardy series - about an Irish bartender, former police officer and lawyer. A Goodreads member highly recommended John Lescroart as legal thriller author and because my partner has pretty much read all of John Grisham's books, I was looking for a replacement. The Lescroart recommendation was very strong and the main character of this series sounded intriguing so I decided to give it a try and start at the beginning.Initially this book didn't really grab me. It took me an unusually long time to get into it and to finish it. Am not sure if this was due to how busy I was with other things at the time or because of what I considered the author's fairly leisurely writing style and plot development pace. This book was more about detective work than legal work, which was a plus for me since I find the legwork and investigation part of a case particularly interesting.The book picked up at the end - enough for me to give it a 3 star rating and to sign out the 2nd book in the series and see how that goes.P.S. My partner read the book in 2 days (usually a much slower reader), rated it 4 stars. The positive - the story kept moving, keeping up interest and and wanting to find out what happened next. The downside - a bit disjointed, doesn't like books where different people speak in the "I" as can be confusing and hard to follow. Looks like Lescroart turns out to be a good a Grisham alternative.
—Mj
