John Lescroart - Dismas Hardy Series: Books 1-2: Dead Irish, the Vig

DEAD IRISH: In his new life as a bartender at the Little Shamrock, Dismas Hardy is just hoping for a little peace. He’s left both the police force and his law career behind. Unfortunately it’s not as easy to leave behind the memory of a shattering personal loss – but for the time being, he can always take the edge off with a stiff drink and a round of darts.

But when the news of Eddie Cochran’s death reaches him, Hardy is propelled back into all the things he was trying to escape—and forced to untangle a web of old secrets and raw passions, for the sake of Eddie’s pregnant widow, Frannie, and for the others whose lives may still be at risk....

THE VIG: A beautiful woman paid it with her body. A seedy lawyer used somebody else’s money. It’s the vig – the exorbitant interest mob loan sharks take on their money. Now, in the city by the Bay, everyone has to pay...

Down-and-out-lawyer Rusty Ingraham left behind a murdered woman and a houseboat splattered with blood. All the evidence said Ingraham was in San Francisco Bay. Dead. But a friend of Ingraham’s, former cop and prosecutor Dismas Hardy, isn’t so sure. And Hardy has to find out, because a stone-cold killer, now paroled, once threatened to kill Ingraham and Dismas Hardy both.

Now, to save his own skin, Dismas must face down liars and killers on both sides of the law. From mob foot soldiers to brokenhearted lovers to renegade cops, a dozen lives are tied to the fate of Rusty Ingraham – and the payback has only just begun...