Hal Chase, a Deputy Sheriff who works at the San Francisco jail, goes to pick up his brother-in-law from the airport. When he returns Katie, his wife, is missing. As the police begin to investigate, Hal realizes that he is becoming a person of interest, and his best bet is to get a lawyer. Dismas Hardy is not only one of the best defense attorneys around but his wife also happened to be Hal's wives therapist and that makes Dismas want the case.
Things begin to look bad for Hal and Dismas hires retired homicide cop Abe Glitsky to look into the case. As Abe begins his investigation he can't help but think what all homicide cops initially think; it's the husband who did it. That's not what he is being paid to think, so he must investigate further. As Abe digs deeper he finds that a series of deaths at the jail where Hal works may be involved in Katie's disappearance. People close to the case begin dying, and now the case must be solved before it is too late for his client and maybe him.
THE KEEPER by John Lescroart is a mile-a-minute thriller with great twists and turns throughout the book. The depth of the corruption is shocking, and you don't see the ending until right before it happens. THE KEEPER is another example of how John Lescroart is skilled at writing thrillers and creating crimes that shock.
On the evening before Thanksgiving, Hal Chase, a guard in
the San Francisco County Jail, drives to the airport to pick
up his step-brother for the weekend. When they return, Halβs
wife, Katie, has disappeared without a clue.
By the time Dismas Hardy hears about this, Katie has been
missing for five days. The case strikes close to home
because Katie had been seeing Hardyβs wife, a marriage
counselor. By this time, the original Missing Persons case
has become a suspected homicide, and Hal is the prime
suspect. And the lawyer he wants for his defense is none
other than Hardy himself.
Hardy calls on his friend, former homicide detective Abe
Glitsky, to look into the case. At first it seems like the
police might have it right; the Chasesβ marriage was fraught
with problems; Halβs alibi is suspect; the life insurance
policy on Katie was huge. But Glitskyβs mission is to
identify other possible suspects, and there proves to be no
shortage of them: Patti Oroscoβrich, beautiful, dangerous,
and Halβs former lover; the still unknown person who had a
recent affair with Katie; even Halβs own step-mother Ruth,
resentful of Katieβs gatekeeping against her grandchildren.
And as Glitsky probes further, he learns of an incident at
the San Francisco jail, where Hal worksβonly one of many
questionable inmate deaths that have taken place there.
Then, when Katieβs body is found not three blocks from the
Chase home, Homicide arrests Hal and he finds himself an
inmate in the very jail where he used to work, a place full
of secrets he knows all too well.
Against this backdrop of conspiracy and corruption,
ambiguous motives and suspicious alibis, an obsessed Glitsky
closes in on the elusive truth. As other deaths begin to
pile up he realizes, perhaps too late, that the next victim
might be himself.
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