Serial thriller

Feb. 13--The writer is in, two days after his 58th birthday, dressed in blue jeans, a dark Mountain Hardwear jacket and comfy brown shoes.

That would be novelist John Lescroart in his memento-filled upstairs writing space in a wooden house converted into offices, on a side street near downtown Davis.

It's not far from the controversial Richards Boulevard underpass, a narrow tunnel where wide trucks sometimes get stuck -- literally -- resulting in monstrous traffic jams.

Lescroart (a French name pronounced "less-kwah," even though he is mostly Irish) was riffing on Davis politics and that local "historic landmark" in particular (which a character trashes in his 2005 book "The Motive").

"Five lanes of a freeway that the state and Caltrans spent $80 million building, to funnel down into a 14-foot-wide, two-lane road?" Lescroart said. "Who's thinking here? No one!" Lescroart fumed a bit while a visitor looked around. Leather couch, pipe collection, fly rod on the wall, guitar on a stand, framed photos, a "Jimmy Buffet for President" bumper sticker, a plaque from Junipero Serra High School engraved with, "Award of Merit in Arts and Letters, Class of 1966."

Lescroart graduated from the private Catholic school in San Mateo and still maintains a connection to the school and ongoing friendships with old classmates.

"There's a huge feeling for the place," he said. "I won this award in October, a great thrill."

There were also bookshelves bulging with volumes, many of them the foreignlanguage translations and various editions of his main body of work. That would be the 13 legal-thriller novels in two series starring his go-to characters, Dismas Hardy, a onetime cop turned defense attorney, and Abe Glitsky, a longtime police officer, both of San Francisco.

Three earlier books from the mid-'80s didn't do well ("They were total disasters in terms of sales"), but Lescroart's new novel, "The Hunt Club" (Dutton, $26.95, 416 pages), made national best-seller lists last week, including the New York Times'.

As for plot, San Francisco P.I. Wyatt Hunt and his best friend, homicide detective Devin Juhle, investigate the murder of a federal judge and the disappearance of Andrea Parisi, a lawyer and TV celebrity. Hunt enlists his circle of friends -- the Hunt Club -- to assist.

"None of us here think about John as a genre author," said Mitch Hoffman, Lescroart's editor at Dutton Publishing in New York City. "To us, he is one of the outstanding novelists working today -- period."

A guy of many talents Lescroart is an easygoing guy of many talents -- a local celebrity who enjoys fishing, cooking, savoring wine, dining out, making music and hanging with his buddies. Yet for all that, his family comes first. He lives with his (second) wife of 21 years, architect Lisa Sawyer, in nearby El Macero. They have two young-adult children, Justine, 18, a freshman at Harvard University, and Jack, 17, a high school senior. "The Hunt Club" is dedicated to Justine, "daughter of my heart."

"I couldn't care less if he wrote again," said Sawyer a few days after my visit with Lescroart. "What's important to me is he's such a faithful husband and father and friend. ... He does want to be recognized as a writer, but he also wants us all to be happy."

Later, Lescroart added, "I do a lot with my family, much more than people realize. Like on Friday nights, we all go out to dinner, maybe a movie."

Prominently displayed on a wall in Lescroart's office was a framed color photo of him at the helm of a fishing boat, the blue ocean in the background.

"My wife, my father and my father-in-law decided to hike the whole John Muir Trail -- (211) miles over 30 days," he said with a mock grimace. "I said to my son, Jack, 'Do you want to do that?' He goes, 'Compared to what?' I went, 'Compared to, say, going to the (British Virgin Islands) and hanging out at Little Dix Bay.' He said, 'Let's go!' So we did. We went marlin fishing. We didn't catch any marlin but we got some tuna."

The conversation soon turned to writing, naturally.

"I'm trying to get my new book beyond page 100, but I'm stuck," he said. "The thing you have to keep doing is not worry too much about it. You have to trust that it's gonna come."

Illness changes everything Literary success was a long while coming, but Lescroart has made up for lost time. The short version is this: The UC Berkeley graduate (English literature) could not find financial security as a musician (Johnny Capo and His Real Good Band) nor as a novelist. He left music at age 30 to take a series of office jobs that led to full-time work as the word-processing supervisor for a large Los Angeles law firm. He continued to write, mostly at home in the mornings before work.

Life simmered along for the next 6 1/2 years, but then something happened that turned up the heat big-time. In 1989, he went body-surfing in contaminated ocean water at Seal Beach, north of Long Beach, and contracted spinal meningitis. At the hospital in Pasadena, doctors told wife Lisa he had only hours to live.

Eleven days later he was out of the hospital; later still, he returned to work, only to face another nightmare.

"I hit the low," recalled Lescroart, his voice growing somber. "When I got sick, Lisa called the firm and told them I was gonna die, which is what the doctors had told her. Imagine when I had the bad grace to get better and come back six weeks later."

An untenable personnel situation awaited Lescroart, one he now calls "obscene. I went in to (complain to) the managing partner. He just looked and me and went, 'I don't give a (blank) and I don't know who you are.' "That turned my whole world around," he said. "It was this incredible betrayal of what I thought people were. I can't tell you how much it shocked me, even though I was 43 at the time. I was their rock! Suddenly, I had a new sense of how bad people can be and what hatred is. I think some of my bad guys (in the books) really draw from those moments."

Lescroart stayed at the firm another year -- with a full-time migraine headache from the meningitis -- and then packed up the family and headed to Davis, familiar grounds where the cost of living was less. The managing partner died a few years later.

"I think John realized it was a second chance and a turning point," Sawyer said of the move. "He thought, 'Do I want to stay in word processing the rest of my life? No.' "We made the agreement that we would both interview for jobs (in the Sacramento area), and whoever got one that paid enough to support us first would be the one who would work. I went back to work full time and he stayed home and wrote full time. He did that for two years and that's when 'Hard Evidence' hit (1993) and did really well. I got to come back home and be with the kids."

Lescroart was able to support his family on the success of his novels as each entry in the Hardy-Glitsky series was more successful than the last. National recognition was his, as was a loyal fan base.

It was not serendipity that the Hardy-Glitsky series is set in San Francisco. "I grew up reading (Continental authors), so I thought the first rule of a novel was it had to be set in Europe," said Lescroart. "I couldn't imagine getting a sense of romance in America. So my first three novels were set in Europe.

"When it came time to write about a modern guy in America, San Francisco seemed to have that European sensibility and overtones, like architecture, food, unknown streets, crazy politics."

Hardy and Glitsky are longtime friends who act as safety nets and sounding boards for each other, a theme from Lescroart's own life.

"I'm very blessed with friends," he said. "I think it's what makes life rich. And friendships make for good conflict in the books, and conflict is drama. How boring to write about everybody being happy all the time. I'd like to be happy all the time, but few of us are."

Lescroart's private life also involves wining and dining, and he is a cook of some skill.

"I'm more of a gourmand than a gourmet, but I cook at home every night," he said. "I also butcher stuff, I make my own olives, and I've got a million knives and lots of pots. My favorite restaurants are the Waterboy, Spataro and Biba. When we want red meat, we go to Morton's of Chicago.

"I love the wine thing and the culture around it; it's as fun as can be," he continued. "I've got a little of that in 'The Hunt Club.' I can tell a Pinot Noir from a Cabernet, but I can get mixed up between a Chianti and ... something else. I hang out with Frank Seidl, a good friend for 43 years who's a bigwig at Kendall Jackson."

Serra graduate Seidl, director of U.S. sales for the foreign properties of Kendall Jackson Wine Estates, said of his pal, "Wine has been a love affair of ours since our college roommate days at Berkeley. Now we taste a lot of different wines together. John has quite a good palate."

Lescroart the Renaissance man is also a lyricist and composer (he played the guitar and sang Simon and Garfunkel's "Dangling Conversation" during our visit), with two music CDs, "As the Crow Flies" and "Date Night."

"I'm a player, but not a very good one," he said in typical modest style. "I'm a child of the '60s. I like Jimmy Buffet, Jackson Browne, the Eagles, the Beatles. I even like Neil Diamond. I used to perform Neil Diamond all the time. I bought his new album. I'm probably the only male in America to have it."

Hates intolerance, cheaters Lescroart is acutely conscious of his good fortunes -- starting with surviving meningitis and moving to literary success -- but what brings him the most contentment?

"Probably eating and drinking with friends, including my wife and kids. I love that family table thing. We had my birthday party at Morton's the other night and there were 11 of us around the table, talking and laughing.

"Scenes like that have always been a big part of my life, just because I'm from a big Catholic family. We were inclusive in a major way. I'm still inclusive."

And what is it that bugs him?

"Intolerance. I would like to see a little less anger in the world," he said, frowning. "And I don't like cheaters. Suck it up and take responsibility. The people who blame other people, they screw it all up. The whole short-attention-span sound-bite mentality is counter-brain, and I'm a believer in using your brain."

At this stage of the game, does Lescroart have an ultimate goal?

"I'd like to keep doing this until I die," he said. "I didn't get to do it until I was 45, and now I'm 58. I don't know if that's a good goal, but it's plenty for me."

THE LESCROART LIBRARY: John Lescroart's first novel was "Sunburn," a now-out-of-print paperback original that won a Joseph Henry Jackson Award. The book revolves around travels through Western Europe and Spain.

Next came two books about the foreign adventures of crime-solving chef Auguste Lupa, reputedly the son of Sherlock Holmes -- and who may have been the young Nero Wolfe. "Son of Holmes" takes place in France while "Rasputin's Revenge" is set in Russia.

Lescroart's next 13 novels are two series featuring Dismas Hardy, a one-time cop turned defense attorney; and Abe Glitsky, a longtime police officer, both of San Francisco.

The author's new book, "The Hunt Club," could herald the start of a third series with protagonist Wyatt Hunt, a private eye in San Francisco. When asked, Lescroart replied, "It's the next book, whatever that may be. Dismas and Hunt are both in it."

For more information: www.johnlescroart.com.

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