Wyatt Hunt is just about to shut down the Hunt Club, which has not garnered any business is some months, the result of the severe recession and a negative reaction by clients to perceived past transgressions by Hunt. And then the murder of a much-loved San Francisco mover and shaker in the non-profit sector gives rise to a brainstorm: solicit donations to go towards a reward for information about the man’s murder for which the Hunt Club could act as a clearinghouse. And lo and behold a bonanza is born, breathing temporary life into the investigative agency.
The plot gives the author the platform to take a look at the workings of the City by the Bay’s elite, warts and all. And it isn’t very flattering. Corruption, fraud, influence peddling and murder are just some of the blemishes portrayed. Along the way, the story is somewhat of a potboiler, with a young Hunt associate protecting a beautiful potential suspect merely on the basis of his physical attraction to her.
The prose is tight, the plotting precise, but somehow the story just seems to plod along, never really rising to the heights of prior Lescroart novels, and appeared, at least to this reader, to have been constructed mechanically; it is, nonetheless, both interesting and moving.
