Two of the most prolific New York Times best-selling authors of the last forty years are Dean Koontz and John Lescroart. As you walked into any bookstore, airport gift shop, library, even the book and magazine aisle of your favorite grocery store over the course of your life; these names were likely in your line of sight.
The first Dean Koontz book I picked up long ago turned out to be a rather grizzly horror story. Since this was well before I developed a creeping affection for Stephen King, I quit the Koontz book. I don’t even recall the name.
So, when I saw The Friend of the Family (2026) staring at me from the new fiction case at the local library, and since it was hot outside, and because I had recently read and written about climate change, hallucinogenic drugs, and the American Revolution, I finally decided to give Koontz another try. I was not disappointed. Set during the Great Depression and World War II, this mystically touched historical novel has many things I enjoy: fictional characters interacting with historical figures; the schemings of Hollywood personalities during its Golden Age; a traveling carnival of that style that no longer exists; a protagonist overcoming obstacles that typically hobble the rest of us; the reminder that, despite patriotic arguments to the contrary, great wealth inequalities have shaped much of the history of our nation; and, oh yeah, having Laurel and Hardy over for dinner, and then… having Groucho Marx over for dinner.
As I really enjoyed this most recent work after having quit one of his books years ago, I decided to stick with the 2020s. Koontz’ Going Home in the Dark (2025) involves four artistically-inclined friends who survived their high school nerdiness by embracing the very things that make them nerds. Calling themselves the “four amigos,” their lasting friendship does what so many adolescent friendships fail to do: continue to thrive well into their 30s. Rebecca the actress, Bobby the novelist, and Spencer the painter have all moved away from Maple Grove when they learn that the fourth amigo, Ernie the songwriter, has fallen into a coma and is unlikely to survive. The three return to their hometown only to discover that mysterious things are afoot at the local research center. Good fun.
In the intro titled “Read This First or Live to Regret It,” Koontz hints at the autobiographical nature of this one: “The speculation that I am the ‘fifth amigo’ and have expunged my role in this is an unlikely theory that I will neither confirm nor deny for legal reasons.” Koontz continues to “breaks the fourth wall” in Going Home in the Dark, by periodically speaking directly to the reader. These excerpts reveal a great deal about how the prolific author thinks.
Koontz’ Quicksilver (2022) begins with a three-day-old infant left by the side of the road in a lonely Arizona desert. A short note on the bassinet identifies the child as Quinn Quicksilver, who has already become the first person narrator of a tale that quickly takes on some of the Stephen King-esque qualities that I once found distasteful. Having now enjoyed King so much, and with two entertaining Koontz books under my belt, I stuck with it. Suffice to say that my patience was rewarded.
Having determined that Dean Koontz is a fine writer, I decided to check out something from earlier in his career.
Three completely different stories are told in brief snippets within Koontz’ Watchers (1987) and the reader does not see the beginnings of their connections until 119 pages in; a Golden Retriever saves a guy who appears to be pondering suicide, a hit man lurks in the garage of a doctor, and a homely woman is intimidated by the TV repairman. I’ll just leave the rest of that one to your imagination except to say that in the 2003 Afterword of Watchers, Koontz tells of his wish to continue writing books well into his old age; adult diapers and all (and how many stories have you encountered recently that include a TV repairman?).
Over 100 Dean Koontz novels have sold over 500 million copies in 38 different languages and it’s a pretty good bet that the randomly selected Dean Koontz will satisfy. My next choice is to try out his Odd Thomas series that includes eight books published between 2003 and 2015. These look appealing because they are also told in the first person, which Koontz had a lot of fun with in Quicksilver, but mainly because that narrator is the titular 20-year-old short-order-cook who sees dead people. I’ve come a long way, people.
Like my Dean Koontz experience, I randomly encountered a recent John Lescroart book on display at the library and I noticed it was one of a series featuring attorney Dismas Hardy. The cover also included some fine words from legal-thriller icon John Grisham praising Lescroart; indeed, many literary critics have referred to Lescroart as the “West Coast Grisham.”
With interest piqued, I decided to get to know Dismus Hardy from “birth.” I ruined one though because I mistakenly first read The Vig (1990) which is actually Dismas Hardy #2.
John Lescroart has been regarded as a keen observer of San Francisco much as Michael Connelly and his Detective Harry Bosch family of stories have captured the gritty spirit of Los Angeles. Scott Turow’s legal thrillers do much the same for Chicago and I absolutely adore all of these guys.
Lescroart, like his contemporaries, uses the legal thriller to explore the moral dimensions, and particularly the shortcomings, of the American system of justice; the death penalty, race and crime, judicial corruption, and more. And while some of these author’s older works are dated by technology, the moral issues endure.
Set in San Francisco of the late twentieth century, these great stories offer a throwback look at a very different time. One need only consider a single technological shift—and-line telephones with answering machines to cell phones—to make one wonder how in the heck we were able to survive it all. Without a phone in the pocket, readers of these old books, especially action stories in the city, must keep tabs on the location of the nearest phone booth.*
In the Vig, Dismas Hardy is a former prosecutor in San Francisco who now tends bar at the Little Shamrock. He left the DA’s office after a personal tragedy and alcohol is the medicine for his grief. The plot is simple enough but the tension quickly builds; and, of course, not all is as it appears to be.
A former colleague in the District Attorney’s office drops by to inform Diz that a criminal they worked together to send to prison years ago has been paroled. This one plays out as a murder mystery rather than a legal thriller but the investigative instincts of Hardy and his San Francisco police detective friend Abe Glitsky are solid and suspenseful.
Hardy was a beat cop with Glitsky before becoming a lawyer which gives our protagonist some inside scoops emanating from police investigations. Hardy also has an ongoing relationship with a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle reminding readers of the role print media once played; although the final book in the series takes us well into the twenty-first century. It will be fun to see how the pace of technology plays into later stories.
So far, I have read four Dismas Hardy books that are firmly planted in the 1990s. Hard Evidence (1992), The 13th Juror (1994), and The Mercy Rule (1994) all get Hardy back in the courtroom, first as a return to the DA’s office and then as a reluctant defense attorney. Hard Evidence begins with a human hand found in the belly of a shark. Spoiler alert: the hand is eventually reunited with its owner. The 13th Juror deals with a hot-button issue of the 1990s, the slow acceptance of the Battered Wife Syndrome establishing the grounds for declaring that killing an abuser is self-defense. The problem is, exercising this strategy means admitting to the murder, something Hardy’s beautiful client refuses to do. The Mercy Rule taps into another issue widely raised in the 1990s and still part of our national dialogue: the right-to-die and the right to engage the services of someone who might assist in ending one’s own life.
Snappy trial dialogue, complicated personal lives, and vividly drawn recollections of San Francisco smoothly color the Dismas Hardy books. If you want to do this right, check out Dead Irish (1989), Dismas Hardy #1, and then let me know what I missed.
Reading Dean Koontz and John Lescroart has filled a few gaps in my reading life after seeing these names on books for forty years. And, even if you don’t order these up for yourself, at least you now have some idea of what you’re missing.
Happy Reading Dayz!
*For my younger readers, a phone booth is a little walk-in glass closet which was typically found in urban areas. On the wall is a big box with coin slots. By picking up the attached handset and dropping in a dime or a quarter, a phone call can be made. If the number is not known, one can punch Zero without depositing any coins and a real live person will help you find it. If the number you are calling is far away, the operator will interrupt and ask you to insert more coins. If you have no coins, the operator will make the call for you and ask the person you are calling if they are willing to pay for the call; sometimes this practice of “calling collect” annoys people… especially if you are calling from a jail. Finally, a long time ago, Clark Kent used a phone booth to change into his Superman costume. You should probably avoid trying this one because, as I said, a phone booth’s walls are made of glass.
