Sunburn

“Grisham and Turow remain the two best-known writers in the genre. There is, however, a third novelist at work today who deserves to be considered alongside Turow and Grisham. His name is John Lescroart.”—
Chicago Sun-Times

Praise for the Novels of John Lescroart

Betrayal

“
Betrayal
is provocative . . . a tour de force of a legal thriller . . . easily usurps the latest from Grisham and Turow.”—
The Providence Journal-Bulletin

“Lescroart dispatches courtroom scenes with crisp efficiency.”—
Entertainment Weekly

“Adrenaline-infused . . . A first-rate addition to the author’s ongoing series, this should please both long-time readers and new fans.”—
Publishers Weekly

“Extremely satisfying.”—
Library Journal

“A great read.”—
Booklist

continued…

The Suspect
The American Authors Association
2007 Book of the Year

“An intriguing puzzle. . . . Developments in Stuart’s case will keep the reader guessing until the very end.”—
Richmond Times-Dispatch

“
The Suspect
is one smooth ride, and a fine legal thriller to boot.”—
Philadelphia Inquirer

The Hunt Club

“A fast-paced tale of high-society intrigue and street-savvy suspense.”

—
The Washington Post Book World

“Stakeouts, fake-outs, make-outs and shoot-outs. . . . [Lescroart is] a terrific yarn spinner.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

The Motive

“Surpasses anything Grisham ever wrote and bears comparison with Turow.”—
The Washington Post

“Unfolds like a classic
Law & Order
.”

—
Entertainment Weekly

The Second Chair

“Lescroart gives his ever-growing readership another spellbinder to savor.”—
Library Journal

The First Law

“With his latest, Lescroart again lands in the top tier of crime fiction.”—
Publishers Weekly

The Oath
A
People
Page-Turner

“A TERRIFIC CRIME STORY.”—
People

The Hearing

“A SPINE-TINGLING LEGAL THRILLER.”

—Larry King,
USA Today

Nothing but the Truth

“RIVETING . . . ONE OF LESCROART’S BEST TALES YET.”—
Chicago Tribune

The Mercy Rule

“WELL-WRITTEN, WELL-PLOTTED, WELL-DONE.” —Nelson DeMille

Guilt

“BEGIN
GUILT
OVER A WEEKEND. . . . If you start during the workweek, you will be up very, very late, and your pleasure will be tainted with, well, guilt.”—
The Philadelphia Inquirer

A Certain Justice

“A West Coast take on
The Bonfire of the Vanities
. . . richly satisfying.”—
Kirkus Reviews

“A gifted writer. . . . I read him with great pleasure.”—Richard North Patterson

The 13th Juror

“FAST-PACED . . . sustains interest to the very end.”—
The Wall Street Journal

Hard Evidence

“ENGROSSING . . . compulsively readable, a dense and involving saga of big-city crime and punishment.” —
San Francisco Chronicle

Dead Irish

“Full of all the things I like. Lescroart’s a pro.”

—Jonathan Kellerman

ALSO BY JOHN LESCROART

A Plague of Secrets
Betrayal
The Suspect
The Hunt Club
The Motive
The Second Chair
The First Law
The Hearing
The Oath
Nothing but the Truth
The Mercy Rule
Guilt
A Certain Justice
The 13th Juror
Hard Evidence
The Vig
Dead Irish
Rasputin’s Revenge
Son of Holmes

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Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Pinnacle edition. Published by arrangement with the author.

First Signet Printing, June 2009

eISBN : 978-1-101-05678-3

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To Leslee Lescroart and to Pat Gallagher-Jones

I would like to thank the San Francisco Foundation for its encouragement and support. For this new edition, I’d especially like to thank Barbara Sawyer, who is responsible for its resurrection.

There is something bittersweet and wonderful about seeing an old, long-out-of print book re-emerge back into the light of day.

It’s bittersweet because the person who wrote the book has changed into an entirely different being from the idealistic and ambitious young man who set out to write what he hoped would be the first book of a long literary career. My initial, naive vision of the writing life never considered the possibility of a sustained oeuvre, which has now reached the majestic total of twenty books. I thought that the way it worked was you wrote one novel so unforgettable, so true, and so sweeping that everybody in the world read it (think
To Kill A Mockingbird
), and then after that, you were somehow, magically, transformed into an Author for Life. Little did I realize back then that authors who made a living at this noble profession tended to write a book every year or at least every couple of years. So, since
Sunburn
was going to be my one shot at literary immortality, I felt I had to throw everything I had into it.

As I first set down the blank pages next to my typewriter (yes, a typewriter—it was that long ago!), I dared for the very first time to let myself imagine that I might be creating a real book, something important that would have a life beyond my own. And if that was what it was going to be, I wouldn’t be satisfied with a pedestrian story told in the “regular” fashion. No, I’d of course first have to set it in Europe, à la Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Then I would tell the story in a sty listically intricate way—using a narrative voice in first, second, and third person. No one had ever written a book like the one I was contemplating. It was not only going to change my life—it might actually change the literary world itself. Needless to say,
Sunburn
did none of the above.

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