John Lescroart: as in less-kwah!

Excerpts from the interview by Lynn Kaczmarek in the February/March 2004 issue of Mystery News

I've been talking to John Lescroart a lot recently. The first time my tape recorder decided to only record my side of the conversation (you have no idea how many times I can say "cool" or "how cool is that?" in an hour...). Then he graciously agreed to do the whole thing over again three days later. The tape recorder worked just fine that time. Ain't technology grand?

John Lescroart is mostly Irish, but his last name is French, hence the "less-kwah". And he thinks it's "the worst name in publishing"--too hard to pronounce. Maybe, but it certainly isn't holding him back these days. The Second Chair is his newest in the now twelve book series featuring lawyer Dismas Hardy (named after Saint Dismas, the "good thief" crucified next to Jesus) and cop Abe Glitzky. And I'll be very surprised if it doesn't appear on best seller lists. It won't be the first time Lescroart's been there and most assuredly won't be the last.

But all was not so in the beginning. Lescroart was 37 years old, working at a law firm in L.A., writing from 6-8 in the morning, going to work supervising the word processing center, then working the second job, typing briefs between 6 and 11. "I was kind of feeling like I was doing OK--Dead Irish [the first in the series] had been nominated for the best novel by the Shamus people and I felt like I was going to start making in-roads into the business." And then John Lescroart went body surfing...

"I went body surfing on Saturday, I knew I was sick on Sunday because I had Dodger tickets and I gave up going...and then by that night I was very, very sick and my wife took me to the hospital at 4 a.m. She had my 19-month-old and my 5-month-old in her arms...They gave me a spinal tap and [the doctor] said 'he's got meningitis and it doesn't look good...' They thought I'd be dead in 2 hours."

Read the complete interview in the February/March 2004 issue of Mystery News