John Lescroart

John Lescroart (pronounced "less-KWAH") was born in Houston, Texas, in 1948 and grew up mostly in California. Before becoming a full-time novelist he worked as a computer programmer, a bartender and in a variety of other jobs, publishing his debut novel, Sunburn, in 1981, followed by two historical mysteries starring Auguste Lupa, a detective implied to be Sherlock Holmes's son. His breakthrough came with Dead Irish (1989), introducing Dismas Hardy, a former cop, Vietnam veteran and bartender turned San Francisco defense attorney, who became the anchor of Lescroart's long-running legal-thriller series.

Over more than three decades, Lescroart has expanded that fictional San Francisco into a dense, overlapping web of series and characters: nineteen numbered Dismas Hardy novels, a three-book strand centred on Hardy's best friend, homicide detective Abe Glitsky, a further trilogy following private investigator Wyatt Hunt, and several standalone thrillers. His books are known for detailed, plausible legal and police procedure grounded in real San Francisco criminal justice, paired with a large recurring ensemble cast whose personal lives develop across the whole body of work almost like a long-running drama.

Lescroart's novels have been translated into more than twenty languages and have sold in the tens of millions worldwide. He continues to write and lives in Northern California.