John Lescroart

For Dismas Hardy, it begins with a request from a judge for a small favor: disposing of the caseload for attorney Charlie Bowen who just disappeared months ago. Aha, one file contains an appeal to overturn the murder conviction of National Guard reservist Evan Scholler who had gone down for life without parole for killing a former Navy SEAL who was working some kind of security for a private contractor when he died. But Ron Nolan’s relationship with Scholler, we learn, had formed in Iraq.

Lescroart welds his story using Hardy and Glitsky as tools, but he tells it from several points of view. The real point is, entertainment aside, to wake us up to the roles that corporations like Halliburton or the fictitious security firm in this book play, to the unbelievable, criminally careless squandering of money and materiel, to the cynical opportunism presented by the war. It should outrage you—and we should all read this before the election, whether we are pro or con the war in Iraq.