The Keeper by John Lescroart

In The Keeper John Lescroart returns to the foundation that fosters his success. He features the original characters of his quarter century old series... Dismas Hardy, defense attorney and Abe Glitsky, now retired homicide detective plus many of their cronies in the tight knit fraternity that comprises the San Francisco legal system.

  

Hal Chase is a guard at San Francisco county jail.  On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving he leaves home to pick up his step brother at the airport but the flight is delayed.  When he returns four hours later his wife, Katie is missing.  By Monday morning the police decide this is a likely murder and homicide detectives visit Chase.  Hal realizes he is a suspect with a hole in his alibi and hires Dismas Hardy to represent him, against what... he isn’t sure yet.  Hardy concludes the police have stopped investigating Katie’s disappearance and he figures the best outcome would be to simply find her.  He hires his best friend, the now retired homicide detective Abe Glitsky to find Hal’s wife.  Abe fights all his cop instincts that ‘the husband did it’ and investigates as objectively as his training will allow.  He learns that Katie had been seeing a marriage counselor (coincidentally Hardy’s wife Frannie), Hal had recently ended an affair with Katie’s friend, the rich and beautiful Patti, and Hal was an alibi witness for a deputy sheriff who is a person of interest in more than one suspicious death in the county jail.  Oddly the more Abe learns, the more he believes Hal is innocent.

 

Katie’s body is found in the underbrush in a park near her home.  With no evidence that Hal committed the crime the grand jury is convened to point the finger of guilt his way.  Hal is arrested and put in jail, the same jail where he is employed.

Meanwhile the DA, Wes Farrell has assigned an investigator to uncover the suspected conspiracy in the county jail.  The investigator makes some significant progress but is murdered by a supposed robber before her findings are made known.  Farrell asks Glitsky to become his new investigator and with Hardy’s blessing Abe accepts the job.  By now Glitsky is obsessed… not only with clearing Hal Chase but with slamming the door on the corruption in the county jail.  Of course this makes him a threat to possibly more than one murderer.  The keeper, the book’s namesake refers to a keeper of secrets… old secrets worth killing for.

I’m a longtime fan of Lescroart but have to admit I’m sometimes disappointed when he brings in new younger characters. The Keeper is Lescroart at his best featuring cornerstone characters, Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky.  While fans require no further character development for this well-defined duo, we get a deeper look at Abe with his handling of retirement and concern for his young family.  But mostly we get to share that adrenaline rush from his obsession as he closes in on his prey.  This old dog can still sniff out the rotten smell of deceit and learn some new tricks along the way.  Let’s hope the author sees it that way too and creates the next Hardy-Glitsky adventure.