Dismas Hardy, the dart-playing, saloon-keeping lawyer who is one of John Lescroart's most consistently interesting and appealing heroes, faces a dilemma: if he can prove to a jury that Graham Russo helped his father Sal kill himself because the sick old man asked him to, a liberal San Francisco jury will probably vote to acquit Graham of first-degree murder. Hardy would love to plead manslaughter to escape the wrath of the state's attorney general who wants to nail Graham. However, despite the evidence against him, Graham insists he didn't do it. What is a lawyer to do, and who can he believe?

Although Lescroart leads the reader up and down a few blind alleys before the truth comes out, the mystery's not the thing here. It's the characters and their back stories that make this such a good read. Foremost among them is Graham, who washed out of pro baseball and walked out of a promising law career before finding the father who once deserted him long ago. The core of the story is Graham's relationship with Sal, who's losing his mind to Alzheimer's but may still be a threat to a federal judge who was once his closest friend. Then there's Sarah Evans, the homicide cop who falls in love with her suspect. For good measure, there are some changes in the lives of those characters who are familiar to readers from other Dismas Hardy adventures--Abe Glitsky, the half Jewish, half black cop; Drysdale, the D.A. who's been beaten in court by Dismas in previous outings; Frannie, Dismas's wife; Moses, his brother-in-law; and Dismas himself, who becomes more interesting every time Lescroart brings him back. While the pacing is langorous and the denouement not as tight as it might be, The Mercy Rule provides a complex and satisfying reading experience. --Jane Adams


Amazon.com Audio Review
Against his better judgment, Dismas Hardy decides to defend fellow attorney and onetime baseball star Graham Russo, indicted for murder in the death of his ailing father, Sal. At first, Sal's death looks like suicide--his plans to kill himself before his cancer or his Alzheimer's made life unlivable were well known. And Graham admits administering morphine to ease his father's suffering. Was it a mercy killing? Maybe. But then Sal's valuable collection of baseball cards turns up in Graham's safe-deposit box. The stage is set for a confrontation between Graham and his old law-school rival, now assistant state attorney, and between Dismas and his old friend, Homicide Chief Abe Glitsky. But an appealing woman cop who falls in love with her suspect and a senior judge with a personal interest in the trial's outcome keep changing the odds. What lifts this courtroom drama a notch above Lescroart's earlier mysteries featuring the ruminative and appealing Hardy are Dismas's reflections on how out of touch he's become with his family--something he'd vowed to correct until Graham Russo came to him for help. Veteran stage and screen actor John Shea captures Hardy's inner conflicts in a voice soft with the glow of fine Irish whiskey; audio fans are in for a treat. (Running time: six hours, four cassettes) --Jane Adams


From Library Journal
Bartender-turned-lawyer Dismas Hardy follows up his successful venture in The 13th Juror with a new case: did lawyer Graham Russo, once a promising ball player, mercifully kill his dying father with morphine, or was it murder?Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Hardy, a wisecracking detective/lawyer and former bartender reminiscent of Spencer, takes on a case of assisted suicide that dredges up a sordid past and a crime that won't be forgotten. Sal had been a lovable fishmonger who sold to the judges and lawyers in his town until his memory started to go; the Alzheimer's gets to him, along with the pain. When he turns up dead, the police think it's murder and that his son is to blame. John Shea growls and croons as Hardy makes his way from present to past, connecting all the pieces and underlying motives that end in a startling conclusion and an even more unusual murderer. Throughout, Shea keeps pace with the action and tension, drawing the listener even deeper into the cover-up and collusion. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
What's not to like about a San Francisco defense lawyer who would rather tend bar than be a member of it? Dismas Hardy's checkered legal career resumes (after its hiatus since The 13th Juror, 1994) with him mired in boring civil litigation. Excitement comes in over the transom in the form of Graham Russo, who explains that the police are investigating the death (murder or assisted suicide?) of his father, Salmon Sal. Suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Salmon Sal slid down life's ladder, lived in a dump furnished in early Salvation Army, mongered fish from his truck, and may have been a mule for underworld gambling money. Not the most forthcoming of clients, Graham hedges on the details of his alibi, finally confessing that he was at Sal's dive the day of the death, had been giving him morphine, and had control of Sal's money. Opportunity, means, and motive equal a slam-dunk murder case to the prosecutors but not to a jury sympathetic to euthanasia. Yet Hardy (and Lescroart's new star character, homicide detective Sarah Evans) are sure Sal was, in fact, murdered. By Graham's odious siblings? By Sal's old friend Judge Mario Giotti? With that second wind, the mystery continues through a story textured like the San Francisco cityscape--its fogs, views, hills, glitz, and grit. Lescroart has the technical clues of the plot perfectly arranged, locking in the attention of mystery mavens until the connections are revealed, but it's his credible characters who cement this entertaining, front-rank whodunit. Gilbert Taylor


From Kirkus Reviews
San Francisco lawyer Dismas Hardy (A Certain Justice, 1995, etc.) is back from Lescroart's disappointing Guilt (1997)this time defending a potential case of euthanasia in a gripping but erratically plotted legal drama. Even though he hadn't seen his divorced father Salvatore (illegal fish merchant ``Salmon Sal'') for 15 years, Graham Russo had grown close to him once more after learning that the old man had Alzheimer's, plus a brain tumor that would probably kill him first. So when Sal dies after a lethal cocktail of Old Crow and morphine, and the evidence points toward murder, the cops pick up Graham. Almost as quickly, however, they let him go, because politically-minded District Attorney Sharron Pratt is bent on making San Francisco a haven for mercy-killings. Graham would be home free, owing his lawyer Hardy only a few hundred, if only the state's Attorney General shared the D.A.'s views. But Graham, an ex-ballplayer who alienated every lawyer in town when he quit a federal clerkship in a futile attempt to get his baseball career back, has enemies in the Attorney General's office who are salivating over the chance to indict him for murder with specials (the robbery of $50,000 and Sal's baseball card collection). Hardy's obvious move is to plead manslaughter. But Graham, insisting he never gave that lethal injection, seems as avid to go to trial as his worst enemies. Meantime, a dozen pots bubble ominously in the background. Graham starts an affair with one of the arresting officers. Hardy struggles to locate a mysterious legatee Sal designated. A complicated civil case claims hours he should be using to prepare his defense. And so to trial, and the unguessable surprise Lescroart has left till after the verdict. Lots going on, then, though even the most patient readers may finish the book annoyed with the score of characters left undeveloped, and the way their feelings about euthanasia have been toyed with in what turns out to be a leviathan red herring. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"Very entertaining. . . a large and emotionally sprawling novel."
--Chicago Tribune

"A taut read. . . Another winner."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"A thought-provoking and important novel."
--Nelson DeMille

FROM OUR EDITORS

John Lescroart's The Mercy Rule is a tragic story that shoots straight from the headlines but is twice as fantastic. When Salvatore Russo, an elderly man with a steadily worsening case of Alzheimer's, is found dead in his ransacked apartment, lawyer Dismas Hardy must determine if it was suicide, mercy killing, or murder.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Vowing to spend more time with his wife and kids, Dismas Hardy is hesitant to take on the case of Graham Russo, a could-have-been-great baseball player turned lawyer indicted for the murder of his father, Sal. Everyone close to the Russos knew Sal was dying, and that he needed morphine injections to ease his suffering. Graham freely admits to administering those injections, but insists he wasn't there the night of Sal's overdose and resultant death. Was it suicide, murder - or mercy? With personal and professional tensions mounting, Hardy finds himself face-to-face with a terrifying truth: If this was a murder, he might well be the next person to die.

SYNOPSIS

This is the question that bestselling author John Lescroart puts forward in his new epic legal thriller, a story that shoots straight from the headlines and is twice as fantastic. Lescroart is quickly becoming the "other legal thriller writer," right after Grisham. His previous novel, The Thirteenth Juror, was a captivating story, as was A Certain Justice. Last year's Guilt left many readers wanting a deeper story, and Lescroart has delivered with this minor masterpiece of detective fiction disguised as law story.

FROM THE CRITICS

Carroll

Looks like John Lescroart has another winner with his The Mercy Rule . . . Off the top of my head, I can't think of another novelist who writes with more affection about San Francisco. The Chamber of Commerce ought to have him on the payroll. Lescroart knows North Beach inside and out, knows the avenues like a deliveryman, has an astute take on the oddball politics of this burg. His new legal thriller, the fifth Dismas Hardy novel, delves into assisted suicide . . . A son is accused in the death of his father, who suffered from Alzheimer's and brain cancer. The grandstanding district attorney declines to prosecute, so the attorney general steps in. "I didn't start out to write such a political novel, but it just turned out that way." In his usual style, Lescroart throws a number of ingredients into the stew. While defending his client, lawyer Hardy struggles with burnout and family responsibilities. A taut read. --(Jerry Carroll - "Lively Arts," San Francisco Chronicle, August 12, 1998)

Faye Kellerman

An edge-of-the-seat thriller that has it all - hot-button issues, deception, greed, corruption and labyrinthine plot that will keep you guessing until the very last page.

T. Jefferson Parker

The best legal thriller I've read in this decade. I dare anyone to read twenty pages and not be absolutely taken with it. Absolutely superior work.

Karen Kijewski

Stacked with powerful and unforgettable characters, taut and suspenseful, The Mercy Rule is a brilliant and compelling courtroom drama. A masterpiece.

People Magazine

Beloved San Francisco fishmonger "Salmon" Sal Russo lies dead in his dingy room. He suffered from Alzheimer's disease and an inoperable brain tumor. Found at the scene: empty vials of morphine, a syringe and a Do Not Resuscitate notice. Suicide? The police arrest his estranged son Graham for "helping" his father to die, a capital crime under California law. For Graham's attorney Dismas Hardy - the protagonist of several successful Lescroart novels - the case leads to a labyrinth of lies, old crimes and tangled relationships inside the federal justice system. Carefully wrapped in a stylish whodunit, The Mercy Rule is a morality play about assisted suicide that finds Lescroart in his best form yet. Bottom Line: A master's take on a troubling social issue.Read all 15 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Well written, well plotted, well done. — Nelson DeMille

John Lescroart is a gifted writer with a distinctive voice. -- Author of No Safe Place — Richard North Patterson