From Publishers Weekly
Further evidence that Lescroart ( Hard Evidence ) can hold his own among legal-thriller writers comes with this taut novel about an abused San Francisco housewife who is arrested for shooting both her seven-year-old son and her physician husband, a control freak. Narrator Dismas Hardy, defense attorney and hero of four previous Lescroart novels, has plenty of suspects and issues to grapple with. First there's his icy, recalcitrant client, Jennifer Witt, who refuses to go with a battered-wife defense; Jennifer's aloof psychiatrist, who may or may not be her lover; some financial shenanigans concerning the victim's business that provide plenty of motive for high-stakes murder. Then there's the problem of Dismas's grandstanding boss, whose flamboyant, hit-or-miss style leaves Dismas constantly scrambling for higher legal ground. Finally, there's Dismas's wife, who resents the time her husband spends on the case but who insists on striking up a friendship with the accused without telling her husband. The story gets off to a slow start, and sometimes Lescroart belabors the obvious. He also comes close to telegraphing the solution to the mystery, and much of his writing about the characters' personal lives is hamfisted. Despite these flaws, however, an intricate story and satisfying courtroom scenes carry the day. Fans of the genre should find the second half of the book, which covers the trial, especially engaging. 60,000 first printing; major ad/promo; paperback rights to Dell; audio rights to Bantam Doubleday Dell; large print rights to Thorndike; Literary Guild and Dou ble day Book Club featured alternates. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Jennifer's fairytale life as the wife of Dr. Larry Witt seems perfect. When Larry and their seven-year-old son are murdered while Jennifer is out jogging, the newspapers have a field day weeping with the photogenic young widow. After she is arrested for the crime, a full-fledged tabloid feeding frenzy erupts. Into this fray steps Dismas Hardy, a fortysomething former district attorney's office hotshot and an ex-bartender who is 43 days into his new job with a prestigious law firm. Dismas, new to the role of defense lawyer, is uncomfortable with his growing belief in Jennifer's innocence, especially since she is reluctant to take her one chance at a "Not Guilty" verdict: acknowledging Larry's years of abuse. A very readable novel with engaging characters and a riveting plot that fans of Scott Turow and John Grisham will love; recommended for most libraries.Dan Bogey, Clearfield Cty. P.L. Federation, Curwensville, Pa.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
After a fizzled career as a prosecutor (lately chronicled in the author's 1992 Hard Evidence), Dismas Hardy works the other side of the street as a defense attorney. His first case seems hopeless: Jennifer Witt is accused of killing her husband and son, and plenty of witnesses place her near the bloody scene. The woman denies all, but it seems obvious it's all over except for the gas chamber. So Diz works "other dude" theories--finding who else could have pulled the trigger. Fruitful avenues of inquiry open up that Diz pursues with a diligence bordering on obsession, exasperating his wife and frustrating himself as the leads peter out. But he discovers that the victim was far from perfect, a wife-beater in fact, who also may have been entangled in some financial shenanigans at his medical practice. So what was the motive? Jennifer acting in self-defense? A Mob hit? Perhaps Jennifer's violent father popped the doc, and there's something fishy about her psychiatrist, too. All questions stay alive in the author's skillful hands, as his alter ego presents his theories to a tough-but-fair type of judge (the juror of the title). The suspense meets the minimum demands of mystery addicts: the domestic violence motif, the San Francisco locale, and the publisher's big promotional plans may increase Lescroart's modest following. Gilbert Taylor


From Kirkus Reviews
Appearing as defense counsel for Jennifer Witt in the sentencing phase of her trial for killing her husband and son, San Francisco attorney Dismas Hardy finds himself inching slowly, slowly from the back bench into the hot seat. Both Diz and David Freeman, his colleague, mentor, and landlord, who's defending Jennifer, know she's not the ideal client. She alternately postures and freezes up; she says nothing about a $300,000 bank account she'd kept hidden from her husband; when she's deined bail, she escapes from prison and holes up in Costa Rica for three months; and she refuses to let David submit evidence that she was a battered wife and abused daughter--even though the prosecutor, who's running for California attorney general, plans to paint her as an insurance-money killer who also shot her seven-year-old son, Matt, when he got in the way. To top it off, the prosecutor announces new evidence that Jennifer killed her first husband nine years ago for his insurance. During the trial to determine Jennifer's guilt or innocence, the balance of power seesaws between the prosecution and the defense, but, inevitably, Jennifer's found guilty. Then, during the penalty phase, Diz is left alone at the defense table, praying that one of his unlikely leads--the slim hope of persuading Jennifer's mother or psychiatrist to testify about the abuse she denies; or a possible scam linking Larry Witt's death to another murder--will turn into a defense he can smuggle into the penalty hearings over the judge's frigid warnings. Diz's defense is so hamstrung by his own client that after a slow start and painstaking, but uninspired, courtroom scenes, his case builds a ton of pressure as it goes down to the wire--though it never becomes the barn-burning equal of Diz's last, Hard Evidence (1993). (First printing of 60,000; Literary Guild featured selection) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"A brilliant courtroom drama."
-The Washington Post Book World

"I double-dare you to begin reading John T. Lescroart's new suspense trial novel and put it down....This one is on the money."
-Larry King, USA Today

"Compelling...The power of the book lies in Lescroart's impeccable accumulation of detail."
-The San Francisco Chronicle

"Unusual in his ability to combine courthouse scenes with action sequences, judicial puzzles and dimensional people, Mr. Lescroart produces a full house of well-drawn characters. The many subplots, social issues and legal maneuvers of The 13th Juror, come together in a fast-paced text that sustains interest to the very end."
-The Wall Street Journal


Review
"A brilliant courtroom drama."
-The Washington Post Book World

"I double-dare you to begin reading John T. Lescroart's new suspense trial novel and put it down....This one is on the money."
-Larry King, USA Today

"Compelling...The power of the book lies in Lescroart's impeccable accumulation of detail."
-The San Francisco Chronicle

"Unusual in his ability to combine courthouse scenes with action sequences, judicial puzzles and dimensional people, Mr. Lescroart produces a full house of well-drawn characters. The many subplots, social issues and legal maneuvers of The 13th Juror, come together in a fast-paced text that sustains interest to the very end."
-The Wall Street Journal


Book Description
He is obsessed with her innocence. He will be destroyed by her guilt.The walls were champagne. The house was immaculate. A prosperous doctor lived there with his son and his beautiful wife. But the elegant walls hid a family's secret, a wife's shame. And one day shots rang out in the doctor's house. Suddenly Jennifer Witt was in jail, facing the death penalty.Jennifer insisted that she had not killed her abusive husband -- and she could never have killed her own son. Dismas Hardy believed her. But Hardy was only part of the defense team, and the only lawyer who continued to believe her...even as her story was torn to pieces, even as her lies came out, even as she was found guilty of murder.Now there's only one thing Jennifer can do to save her life...and she refuses to do it. So Hardy must do it for her. And in a shocking case of violence, betrayal, and lies, his only weapon is the truth...The 13th Juror...When innocence is not enough.


From the Publisher
"A brilliant courtroom drama."
-The Washington Post Book World"I double-dare you to begin reading John T. Lescroart's new suspense trial novel and put it down....This one is on the money."
-Larry King, USA Today"Compelling...The power of the book lies in Lescroart's impeccable accumulation of detail."
-The San Francisco Chronicle"Unusual in his ability to combine courthouse scenes with action sequences, judicial puzzles and dimensional people, Mr. Lescroart produces a full house of well-drawn characters. The many subplots, social issues and legal maneuvers of The 13th Juror, come together in a fast-paced text that sustains interest to the very end."
-The Wall Street Journal



From the Inside Flap
He is obsessed with her innocence.  He will be destroyed by her guilt.

The walls were champagne.  The house was immaculate.  A prosperous doctor lived there with his son and his beautiful wife.  But the elegant walls hid a family's secret, a wife's shame.  And one day shots rang out in the doctor's house.  Suddenly Jennifer Witt was in jail, facing the death penalty.

Jennifer insisted that she had not killed her abusive husband -- and she could never have killed her own son.  Dismas Hardy believed her.  But Hardy was only part of the defense team, and the only lawyer who continued to believe her...even as her story was torn to pieces, even as her lies came out, even as she was found guilty of murder.

Now there's only one thing Jennifer can do to save her life...and she refuses to do it.  So Hardy must do it for her.  And in a shocking case of violence, betrayal, and lies, his only weapon is the truth...

The 13th Juror...When innocence is not enough.


About the Author
Weekday mornings John Lescroart (less'-kwah) drives to his Davis, California office. There, on the top floor of a wood frame building sandwiched between two rambling fraternity houses, he devotes seven concentrated hours to his novel-in-progress. At 5 p.m., the 50-year-old father of two heads home for family pursuits. An evening with his wife and their two children, a dinner he enjoys cooking. Later the Lescroarts pile in the car for their children's many activities. Weekends find Lescroart entertaining friends and sometimes playing baseball, softball, golf, perhaps fishing. The balanced lifestyle Lescroart resolutely maintains while directing his career as an internationally bestselling author would be the envy of the characters in his compelling novels--novels such as A Certain Justice, The 13th Juror, and The Mercy Rule. For while Lescroart delivers page-turning suspenseful action that has drawn starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and praise from Larry King, People magazine, the Wall Street Journal and many others, what distinguishes the author's engrossing reads is something more difficult to create. That something is a study of characters under pressure, characters who haven't achieved the balance John maintains in his life. They are characters whose value systems find them fighting an ongoing battle between demands of the job as they seek justice in the courtroom and in the station house and the insistent needs of their families. And, as in his gourmet cooking, Lescroart adds the seasoning that makes his stories so memorable that once readers get a taste, they acquire an appetite for all his books. That seasoning is the thought-provoking backdrop of front page issues such as domestic violence, racial conflict and assisted suicide. But don't expect a difficult read in a John Lescroart book. He has an easy-going style, with a talent for pacing and crisp dialogue. John has won the prestigious Joseph Henry Jackson Award for Best Novel by a California author for his first book, Sunburn; a Shamus Award nomination for Best Novel for Dead Irish, and an Anthony Award Nomination for Best Novel for The 13th Juror. Most recently, his short story "The Adventure of the Giant Rat of Sumatra" was chosen as one of Houghton-Mifflin's Twenty Best Mystery Short Stories of 1997. An entertaining, humorous speaker with as much to say at the microphone as on the printed page, the New York Times bestselling author can occasionally be persuaded to leave his northern California digs for such engagements.

ANNOTATION

In one moment, Jennifer's world came crashing down. Her husband and son were murdered, and she--as a prime suspect--was facing the death penalty. Jennifer, a battered wife, refused to use a spousal abuse defense, insisting she was innocent. As Jennifer's story began to lose credibility, Dismas Hardy, her attorney/investigator, had only one last weapon for defending his client--the truth.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In John T. Lescroart's brilliant new novel, The 13th Juror, Dismas Hardy, lawyer/investigator, undertakes the defense of Jennifer Witt, accused of murdering her husband and their eight-year-old son as well as her first husband, who had died nine years earlier from an apparent drug overdose. While preparing his case, Hardy learns that both of Jennifer's husbands had physically abused her. But Jennifer refuses to allow a defense that presumes her guilt. She is not guilty, she claims. Hardy is now driven to seek an alternative truth a jury can believe. As the trial progresses, the complex truth itself begins to change, to bend, to fade in and out of focus as the clock keeps ticking on Jennifer's fate, until there seems only one person left to convince, and she is "the 13th juror" - the judge. The 13th Juror is a stunning and suspenseful novel of moral ambiguity, of good intentions, bad judgements and the tortuous path to ultimate justice.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Further evidence that Lescroart ( Hard Evidence ) can hold his own among legal-thriller writers comes with this taut novel about an abused San Francisco housewife who is arrested for shooting both her seven-year-old son and her physician husband, a control freak. Narrator Dismas Hardy, defense attorney and hero of four previous Lescroart novels, has plenty of suspects and issues to grapple with. First there's his icy, recalcitrant client, Jennifer Witt, who refuses to go with a battered-wife defense; Jennifer's aloof psychiatrist, who may or may not be her lover; some financial shenanigans concerning the victim's business that provide plenty of motive for high-stakes murder. Then there's the problem of Dismas's grandstanding boss, whose flamboyant, hit-or-miss style leaves Dismas constantly scrambling for higher legal ground. Finally, there's Dismas's wife, who resents the time her husband spends on the case but who insists on striking up a friendship with the accused without telling her husband. The story gets off to a slow start, and sometimes Lescroart belabors the obvious. He also comes close to telegraphing the solution to the mystery, and much of his writing about the characters' personal lives is hamfisted. Despite these flaws, however, an intricate story and satisfying courtroom scenes carry the day. Fans of the genre should find the second half of the book, which covers the trial, especially engaging. 60,000 first printing; major ad/promo; paperback rights to Dell; audio rights to Bantam Doubleday Dell; large print rights to Thorndike; Literary Guild and Dou ble day Book Club featured alternates. (Sept.)

Library Journal