Attorney Dismas Hardy’s secretary Phyllis McGowan is suddenly caught up in a murder case. She’s arrested in connection with the shooting death of a coyote who was smuggling people across the southern border of the U.S. Hardy must work fast to keep McGowan from being convicted.

Author John Lescroart’s “The Rule of Law” makes up for the fact that he left readers hanging in another recent novel “Fatal.” In “The Rule of Law,” there’s a new plot and an answer to the unsolved mystery from the previous book. CapRadio’s Donna Apidone sat down with the author to discuss the novel and Lescroart's approach to the subject.

Interview Highlights:

I’ve been hearing that this is your last book. Is that true?

It’s my latest book. It’s a book that I’ve written most recently. I really don’t   want to answer that right now because I’m a suspense writer, and I think it’s important to keep a little bit of mystery going.

Phyllis McGowan, who works with Dismas Hardy, is not frightening. Usually, we can depend on her. She’s the gatekeeper, she’s organized, she’s very orderly. She started acting really weird. Right at the beginning of this book, she disappeared for two days.

I didn’t know what happened. I was worried about her now. And then all of a sudden, she’s not at work anymore. Suddenly she becomes this totally enigmatic person, which I just had to run with, and it took off.

You always include a current topic in your book, maybe more than one. But the one that is running through this book is very current and very controversial and it was a big risk for you to be writing about immigration, to be writing about ICE, to be writing about the underground railroad that exists in our part of the country. And you just go there without any hesitation, or so it seems to us. Was there hesitation when you chose to write it?

I try to make the books have a serious core. The whole Idea of ICE and the DACA kids, it was really important to give this book a little bit of heft and to deal with some of the issues that are confronting us daily. Yeah, it was scary to put it down because I didn’t want to get it wrong. The whole subtext of the book was very much part of what we’re all going through right now, especially with the immigration problem.

CapRadio's Donna Apidone interviewed John Lescroart on Jan. 23, 2019.