Product Description

PI Wil Hardesty must face more than his past when the discovery of the 17-year-old wreckage of a plane--and its illicit cargo--prompts the suicide of '60s radical Max Pfieffer. Pfieffer's daughter knows it wasn't suicide. She wants Hardesty to unearth the truth, even if it means unearthing past sins better left in peace...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1795617 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In his second time out (after The Innocents), "off and on" PI Wil Hardesty takes on a case with a legacy of "sins... that cast shadows across generations." Rooted in the turbulent, anti-war movement of the 1960s, this complex drama has a cast that includes terrorist groups, corrupt attorney Lincoln Stillman and Stillman's lethally beautiful wife, Monika. Hardesty is also struggling to keep his marriage together after his young son's death and his wife's recent miscarriage. The discovery of a plane that crashed in a California lake in 1974, and its $2-million cargo, precipitates former anti-war activist Max Pfeiffer's suicide. He leaves behind his daughter, Holly, and, with her, his conviction that the FBI murdered her mother. Holly is equally convinced that the FBI is responsible for her father's death. Holly hires Hardesty. He turns up solid evidence linking Max to kidnapping, bank robbery and murder 20 years before, which provides a world-shattering epiphany for Holly. After she is kidnapped, Hardesty must find her before she is transformed into the "perfect terrorist" to serve Monika's cause. Although sometimes tenuous, the links between Max, Holly, Stillman and Monika are intriguing enough to keep the reader enthralled as they unfold.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
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.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The apparent suicide of counterculture lawyer Max Pfeiffer has prompted the ex-Berkeley radical's daughter, Holly, to hire Wil Hardesty to determine if her dad really killed himself. Hardesty agrees, despite believing that Pfeiffer did indeed commit suicide after the discovery of a 20-year-old plane wreck implicated him in a drug deal. To Holly, raised with a true radical's sense of paranoia, it was a setup. When Holly's mountain home is blown up by a well-armed, very large man, Wil admits that sometimes paranoids are right. Wil works back through Max's past and eventually finds ties to an international terrorist group with a vendetta against him. Toss in Wil's floundering marriage, a tentative relationship with the much-younger Holly, and her estrangement from her father's wealthy family, and one has 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. Wes Lukowsky

Customer Reviews

Like Reading One Of The Best Ross MacDonalds
Although this one starts off a little slowly, I'd recommend it as one of the best mysteries I've read recently. The plot does a wonderful job of intertwining the past with present, with a surprising and satisfying finish. Wil Hardesty does well again in the lead role, and the 60's backdrop for the historical part of the mystery is well done. Don't miss this one!

A fine PI novel
Bearing Secrets is a superb novel. One has a tendency to ladle on accolades and fulsome adjectives until the feeling that no book can be THAT good becomes a barrier to readers. Expectations can be raised too high. But this is a superb novel. This complex, rhythmic, multi-textured novel reaches out to the reader and inexorably binds one tighter and tighter.

It starts with hard-nosed PI Wil Hardesty and an anguished cry for help from a prickly, vulnerable, twenty-year-old hardcase named Holly Pfeiffer. Hardesty's marriage is coming apart and he doesn't know how to stop it. Mostly to distract himself from his personal trouble, he agrees to see Holly. But when he gets to her cabin near Lake Tahoe, he is repeatedly, rebuffed. This woman is a product of her radical father's teachings. He was a veteran of Viet Nam, who then returned to Berkley and used his considerable intelligence and skill to harass the authorities and teach military tactics to a violent splinter group of dissidents. Naturally, his activities drew the attention of the establishment.

When Holly's father Max, dies in a fall from a high ledge in the mountains, Holly accuses the FBI of killing him. After all, the gospel according to Max had taught her that years earlier the FBI engineered her mother's death via a car bomb. In spite of her attempts to rid herself of Hardesty, in Holly's view just another establishment lackey, Hardesty begins a patient, earnest attempt to learn some truths. For a time, the only secrets he bares make Max look guilty. But of what? And then....

Read Bearing Secrets and you will be appalled, exhilarated, horrified and energized. This way lies death, explicit and terrible; here lies corruption and there is exploitation. You are quickly caught up in wheels within wheels. Barre builds tension and suspense cleanly and handles both with dexterity and believability. Fully-formed characters strive against insidious power, fail under the weight of crushing secrets, and strive again.

Yet author Barre does not dwell lovingly on the horror. This book is cleanly written, carefully plotted and very, very intense. It will require attention and careful reading, but Bearing Secrets will reward you in full measure.

Barre can do better than this
After reading The Innocents, the first Wil Hardesty book, I looked forward to Bearing Secrets. Big disappointment! The story begins with the apparent suicide of Max Pfeiffer, a '60s radical, and a call to Hardesty from Pfeiffer's daughter, Holly. At that point the thing goes downhill rapidly. The plot is not a bad idea. Where Barre disappoints is, first, in the seemingly unending problems between Wil and his wife, Lisa. One feels it is time for them to get on with their lives. It is distracting after a time, and the reader must find it hard to identify with either of them, much less sympathize.

Second, the plot is risky. I know I couldn't write it convincingly. But Barre, making a half-hearted effort at some level of believability, fails miserably. The characters are cartoonish, the story told in jerky movements so that we don't know where we are (geographically and chronologically)most of the time. Keep an eye out for Monika and Behr. How did Barre dream them up?

As for the next one in the series I just can't say. I think I may have suffered enough with this overaged surfer dude and all his angst. I realize that a fictional detective needs his/her conflicts and tensions but as much as I liked Wil (and Lisa) at the end of The Innocents, I couln't help thinking "here we go again" at the beginning of Bearing Secrets.

Avoid this one.