BEARING SECRETS
Wil Hardesty Series #2
By Richard Barre
DESCRIPTION
Everyone bears secrets. Some of them become the lies we live. Others become the lies that kill. Wil Hardesty knows about secrets and how they build, one on another, until the truth is buried. Faced with the ever-widening estrangement from his wife, Hardesty answers a young woman’s cry for help. The FBI and police are satisfied that her father, ’60s activist Max Pfeiffer, killed himself; Holly, steeped in the traditions of Max’s radical friends, is certain the government killed him – and that Hardesty’s initial discoveries make him part of the problem, not the solution. Then a fiery attack brings them together in a desperate run for their lives. The chase takes them not only from Tahoe to Berkeley to Southern California but from today into a dimly remembered – or barely suppressed – yesterday: days of violence and manipulation, kidnapping and bank robbery, tear gas and terror, of bloodshed in Southeast Asia and the streets of America.
REVIEWS
“California private investigator Wil Hardesty investigates the alleged suicide of a Sixties radical at Lake Tahoe. When the FBI reveals evidence connecting the dead man to a 17-year-old kidnapping and murder, a wealthy and unscrupulous lawyer, his coldly manipulative wife, and her ruthless bodyguard rob a bank, fire-bomb a house, and engage in surveillance and murder. Meanwhile, Hardesty’s marriage is suffering, and he is forced to cope with his client, the dead man’s daughter. Good narrative, inventive plot, striking characters, and psychological depth make this a keeper. Recommended.” —Library Journal
“…the links…keep the reader enthralled as they unfold.” —Publisher’s Weekly
“A sensitive, introspective private eye…a crime of vast complexity, firmly rooted in the past…[Barre] is a new writer of…obvious skill and sensitivity.” —Los Angeles Times
“One of the best hard-boiled detective novelists.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“A Ross MacDonald-like tale in which the past never lets go and families are the source of both our greatest pain and greatest joy. A solid, intelligent mystery.” —Booklist
“…believable and realistic dialogue…ample evidence the PI novel is still a viable commodity.” —Mystery News