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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780451210227
ISBN number: 0451210220
Label: Signet
Manufacturer: Signet
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 448
Printing Date: January 06, 2004
Publishing house: Signet
Release Date: January 06, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 222574
Studio: Signet
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Product Description:
They date back to the wilder days of San Francisco's vigilante past, a private police force that keeps watch for paying clients. Unfortunately, Sam Silverman-an elderly pawnshop owner and a friend of Lt. Abe Glitsky's father-could no longer afford Patrol Special protection, and he may have paid with his life. Dismas Hardy, putting together a high-stakes lawsuit against the security firm, suddenly finds himself defending a local bar owner accused in Silverman's death. He's convinced of John Holiday's innocence-until he goes on the lam. Now, blocked at every turn, Hardy and Glitsky may be forced to protect not only themselves, but their nearest and dearest, as they step cautiously into a world where the only law is survival...
Amazon.com Review:
One of mystery fiction's most enduring and affecting male buddy teams--San Francisco defense attorney Dismas Hardy and police lieutenant Abe Glitsky--are back in Lescroart's newest thriller. Glitsky's been kicked upstairs (or sideways) to a desk job and warned off his usual homicide beat even though it's his father's best friend who's been murdered in a robbery-slaying, and it's Hardy's pal and client, John Holiday, who's been targeted as the killer. When two more killings follow, no one in the department believes that Hardy's client was set up. They don't believe Abe, either--the harder he tries to get at the truth, the more his ex-colleagues are convinced that he's a rogue cop who wants his old job back and will stoop to anything to get it. They got that idea from the well-bribed police brass who are protecting the real killers from prosecution and putting Abe and Dismas's nearest and dearest in their cross-hairs, too. But that's not quite enough to call our heroes off the case, even though the talented author manages to maintain the tension and ratchet up the suspense long enough to make the reader wonder. --Jane Adams
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Rated by buyers 
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John Lescroart's books stand out because of their human characters, and The First Law is no exception. Dismis' family life is always interesting, and in this one, we see more of that than in some other books. The San Francisco setting and the interplay among these familiar characters make reading this book like going on vacation with good friends and just having a good time.
Rated by buyers 
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This is not Lescroart's best effort.
Sloppiness Part A. A single coincidence can make a great beginning to a book: former lovers meet by chance at an airport; a cop sees a murder suspect walking down the street; a Army private who has become an officer finds out his very first sergeant is his old drill instructor. Great. Pile on the coincidences though, and what you have is sloppiness and laziness. So...let's think about this for a minute. Abe Glitsky and Dismas Hardy are the principal characters of the book. Nat Glitsky is Abe's father. Nat's friend is murdered. Coincidence one (how many people do *you* know who are murdered?). SPOILER ALERT. The chief suspect? It just happens to be the family friend of Nat's son's best friend, Dismas Hardy. Wow! Now that's a second coincidence. The executive assistant to the D.A. overseeing the prosecution just happens to be Nat's daughter-in-law. Wow! A third coincidence! And the D.A. himself is the friend of Nat's son. A fourth coincidence! Pretty soon the coincidences are piling up like a Victor Hugo novel.
Sloppiness Part B. What's wrong with this sentence: "He picked up the glass and poured it's contents into the sink" (p 307)? Answer: the word "it's" should be a possessive ("its"), not a contraction ("it's"). That's an elemental mistake, a high school mistake, demonstrating carelessness and sloppiness. Look, I make that mistake occasionally too, but I'm an amateur, Lescroart and his editor are professionals, which means you're not supposed to make mistakes like that, especially when you're printing a million copies of that sentence and distributing it all over the world.
Poor structure. The novel attempts a noir leitmotif by providing out-of-sequence snippets relating to the ultimate showdown between the good guys and the bad guys (pp 3-6, 145-148, 267-268). Noir works well sometimes but Lescroart steps on one of his plot twists (the identity of the bad apple inside the S.F.P.D.) by doing so, wrecking part of his plot.
Slow. Particularly with the middle part of the book, not much happens. People are suspicious, trying to figure out who's doing what and why, but there's not much forward movement. I suppose part of the reason for the slowness can be attributed to the noir business mentioned above. If you were to read those noir snippets and the last four chapters of the book, you will have captured 80% of its plot and storyline.
Rated by buyers -
This series tracking Dismas Hardy, (attorney), and his good friend Abe Glitsky, (San Francisco Homicide Detective), has gone through some changes, both in the characters' lives as well as the narrative perspective, i.e. Dismas vs. Abe. But on the whole it has been solid - usually with our two protagonists facing an impossible situation, (heavy-handed politics, seemingly insurmountable evidence stacked against an innocent client, etc.), but who prevail at the end against all odds. The plot is no different here - Abe and Dismas find themselves battling police corruption/incompetence while dealing with personal threats to both family and friends - with a crooked and evil, (and of course wealthy), businessman at the center of this web. What is bizarre is that the solution to this crusade is given away in the very first two pages of this not so small book - with the rest being a chronicle of how bad these bad guys can be, (they even shoot Bambi from a helicopter), while poor Abe and Dismas "pursue" all available options until they are simply "forced" to act on their own. Excitement, tension, subtlety are all absent in this one and if there was a point - I missed it. Pass on this one.
Rated by buyers -
I am a firm believer in human law and in its enforcement. I have served on several juries, including one for a homicide, so I know how our system of law functions and I realize that without laws and their enforcement, humanity would live in a state of anarchy. However, I am also aware of the fact that any legal system, like humanity, itself, is imperfect. John Lescroart's novel THE FIRST LAW is a superb, albeit fictional, example of how nature's First Law (the preservation of self and/or of one's loved one(s)) SHOULD take precedence over humanity's legal systems, when a system cannot protect those whom one loves most deeply. The fact that self-protection is not even close in importance to the fear of the future, inevitable deaths of those whom the protagonists love, if they do not break manmade law at great risk to themselves, makes the novel especially emotionally compelling.
I am an avid reader of Lescroart's Dismas Hardy-Abe Glitsky novels. I find them to be complex and thought-provoking, but none of them are as important and memorable to me as is his THE FIRST LAW. Although I have a beloved collection of signed very first and limited editions of various authors, who write in various genres, I normally only collect most authors' very first book(s) in signed, very first editions or "special" books in signed, limited editions because of space limitations. The exception to my rule is my signed, very first edition of Lescroart's THE FIRST LAW. It is that important to me.
The primary point of this novel is that when the legal system cannot protect one's loved one(s), nature takes over and a very loving person, even despite believing wholeheartedly in human law and in its enforcement, will do whatever is necessary to ensure the survival of whoever is/are most loved by that person. Breaking the law to the point of killing others is necessary, but deeply regretted, by the main characters in this novel, as it should be, and the resulting feelings of guilt, which would be felt by any moral person, is made clear and even emphasized in Lescroart's later work.
I have read that Lescroart loosely patterned his novel after the notorious gunfight at the OK corral. This is undoubtedly fact since one of the protagonists is named John Holliday (John was Doc Holliday's given name and Doc was present at the shootout). This is my one bone to pick with Lescroart, since I am also an old west history buff and I believe that the shootout was between two rival gangs, rather than between the "good guys" and the "bad guys". However, that is merely my opinion and, as Stephen Crane wrote, "It is only opinion/and opinion be damned".
I especially most highly recommend this novel to any reader who is extremely interested, as I am, in morality and in ethics. It is also very enjoyable to read merely as a legal/police procedural novel that is highly engrossing and entertaining and that involves one's emotions while reading it. As for myself, whenever I run into nature's First Law in other novels or in life, itself, I immediately think of John Lescroart's novel THE FIRST LAW. I read so much that individual novels rarely make such an impression on me, so this is the highest recommendation that I can give.
Rated by buyers -
This is a story that relies on Lescroart's previous novels. What I mean by this is that the character development in First Law is almost nil. What you have here is an endeavor at a riviting nail biting suspense thriller. Only it doesn't quite work. Strangely, the story does not put you on the edge of your seat. Nor does it make you feel for any of the characters.
This is an ok series. I think that Lescroart has a little too much invested in his characters. Because of this, he hesitates to mess with them too much and from one book to another they pretty much stay frozen. They don't grow. Take a look at Matt Scudder, Lawrence Block's iconic character to see what I am pointing my finger towards. Also, Lescroart has himself boxed into a corner, Dismas and Abe seemingly have been explored by lescroart to the full extent of whom they are.
I would pass this series by. Its ok reading if you pick up one to two hundred pulp thrillers a year. But if you only read a handful, you can do better than this. Try 'Mystic River' by Lehane, or 'Wind Up Bird Chronicle' by Murakami.
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