Bitter Truth

What I found was a very pleasant surprise. Lashner weaves and winds plots, characters and dialogue in a way that makes you late for the train, miss meetings and forget to eat. This book is hard to put down. Nothing contrived, thoroughly entertaining, nicely edited and put together. He manages to describe a scene without making it forced or boring. Just the right amount of context and atmosphere, seasoned with interesting characters. Reading this book will force me to the bookstore to search out his other works. That is saying a lot, even for a bookhog like me.

I read Veritas 1st, then read his first novel, Hostile Witness. I would advise reading Hostile Witness before Veritas since the novels devleop Victor Carl's personality. Both books are excellent reading! Wm. Lashner is a great writer. He creates an exciting story and also caused me to think about how I would react in the same situation. I am looking forward to his future books!

This was my first Lasher book and it won't be the last. It kept me guessing through the entire story. I did have a hard time getting all the characters straight but once I did I could not put the book down.

I "read" this novel as an unabridged audiobook and without having read "Hostile Witness", but I thoroughly enjoyed the twists and turns of the plot. Lashner did a great job of making Victor Carl a believable character, who is alternately annoying and appealing. I'm now returning for more of Lashner's writing in Hostile Witness...

What made me think during reading this book was that Victor Carl's eyes seemed to permanently recover from his old weakness, i.e., very easy to wet by other people's insult. But in this book, the hero seemed to become a totally different person, more attorney but less humanbeing. The writing was smooth and almost as good as Nelson Demille's "GOLD COAST"(but not his "Plum Island"--which was a nuisance and downride), full of witty sentences that made me smile. The plot was also fine, yet making the hero become a totally different person--althoght still craving success and richness--was a twist that the author should be carefully worked out in his next Victor Carl series. I strongly suggest Mr. Lashner to change to other venues of his 3rd-up novels, because talented as he is, he could write anything, any kind of hero or heroine as he choose and not necessarily has to stick to the complicated-yet-become-more-vague Victor Carl. To have such gifted new writer on the bookshelves is absolutely a blessing to our world readers.