Product Description

"A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing." -- Albert Camus

"I suppose every hundred million dollars has its own sordid story and the hundred million I am chasing is no exception..." So begins Veritas, William Lashner's riveting follow-up to his bestselling debut novel, Hostile Witness. Victor Carl--lawyer, loser, hapless hero of Hostile Witness, and a Philadelphian way out of his element--has come to the sweat-drenched jungles of Berize to chase his fortune. Finding it is something else entirely.

Coerced into defending an unpleasant parade of mob enforcers, two-bit hoods, and other Philadelphian riffraff, Carl wants out of his shabby, squalid life more than ever. So when a terrified young woman offers Carl an unusual--but substantial--proposition, he leaps at the opportunity to trade in his grubby existence for a life of wealthy excess.

The job--proving that the recent suicide of wealthy Philadelphian heiress Jacqueline Shaw was not a suicide at all but murder--plunges Carl into an eerie shadow world, where events buried deep in the past exert an awful weight in the present, a world of overturned gravesites, gruesome secrets, and a haunted, lonely estate that houses the broken and dying heirs of a once-powerful family.

Simultaneously caught up in an exploding mob war and the machinations of an avaricious cult, Carl realizes too late that he's in way over his head, as he races against time to collect his fee and get out alive. As Carl edges closer to the truth, a truth that is concealed in the mists of a bygone era and now awaits him in the rainforests of Belize, he learns firsthand that the most terrifying darkness crouches not in the heart of the jungle surrounding him but in the deepest yearnings of the human soul.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #502000 in Books
• Published on: 1997-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 464 pages

Amazon.com Review
In Bitter Truth (previously published Veritas), William Lashner's hero, Victor Carl (last seen in Hostile Witness), is a Philadelphia lawyer who loves money as much as justice and has contacts with people of the mob persuasion. Victor's ancestors include Elmore Leonard and John Grisham. What makes him such an engaging companion is how he manages to turn all his character flaws into assets, as he looks into the murder of a very rich, very social woman and finds that there are all kinds of secret truths buried on the grounds of an old family mansion called Veritas.

From Publishers Weekly
You can see the dollar signs light up in the eyes of Victor Carl, Lashner's money-hungry Philadelphia lawyer (first seen in Hostile Witness), when he learns that his new client, Caroline Shaw, is one of the filthy rich Reddmans. Caroline wants Victor to use his mob connections to get to the bottom of her sister Jacqueline's death. The police think it was suicide, but Caroline is convinced that it was murder and had a lot to do with all the money her brother Eddie owes a loan shark. There are bigger skeletons than gambling debts, however, in the family closets of Veritas, the Reddmans' exquisitely misnamed mansion. Victor soon discovers that the history of the Shaws and the Reddmans provides ample proof of the old saying that at the source of every fortune is a crime. He also gets trapped within the storm clouds of a brewing gang war that may hold the answers to the Reddman mystery, if only he survives long enough to find them. Energized by crisp and delightfully venal first-person narration, this guided tour through the lifestyles of the rich and nasty teems with clever plot twists and (literally) buried secrets, with greed and revenge running neck and neck as the winning motive of a patient murderer. Think Danny DeVito in the Victor Carl role, and Lashner on the hot list of up-and-coming legal thriller writers. 75,000 first printing; $125,000 ad/promo; simultaneous Harper audio; foreign rights sold in Germany and the U.K.; translation rights: HarperCollins; first serial rights: Ray Lincoln; dramatic rights: ReganBooks.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Jackie Redmann was an heir to the Redmann pickle fortune--was because she evidently committed suicide by hanging herself. Her sister, Caroline, isn't convinced and asks burned-out Philadelphia lawyer Victor Carl for help. Hoping to grab a piece of the Redmann family fortune, Carl agrees and, with a determination born of soul-deep avarice, quickly uncovers a potential killer in the midst of mobsters, New Agers, fortune seekers, and the other members of the Redmann clan. Among the secrets that Carl uncovers is the fact that the family fortune may have been built upon a long-ago swindle (giving an ironic twist to the name of the family estate, " Veritas" ). In true Ross Macdonald fashion, Lashner invents a past that never relinquishes its hold on the present, wreaking havoc in subtle, often deadly fashion. Interestingly, though, the man who unlocks the secrets of the past isn't an empathetic hero like Macdonald's Lew Archer, but rather the amoral Victor Carl, blind to both present and past in his quest for profound wealth. This unique updating of the Macdonald formula offers extremely entertaining reading. Wes Lukowsky

Customer Reviews

Philadelphia Gothic
"Bitter Truth" is a grand novel of epic proportions, rich in detail, complex, and long. In this, the sequel to author William Lashner's debut, "Hostile Witness", he serves up a surprisingly gothic mystery with all the trimmings: a dark and decrepit mansion - "Veritas", the wealthy family with secrets that are literally buried, hidden passageways and, of course, murder. Throw in Lashner's usual cast of south Philly mobsters and other assorted bizarre supporting characters, and this adds up to one engrossing and entertaining read.

Philadelphia lawyer Victor Carl has a history defending organized crime. He is approached by Caroline Shaw, an attractive young woman who, unbeknownst to Carl at the time, is heiress to the "Reddman" Pickle fortune. Caroline believes her sister's recent suicide was in fact a mob hit, and that she would be next. Given Car's connections to the underworld, enlists his help. Reluctant at first, but, envisioning a wrongful death law suit with millions of inheritance at stake, he eventually succumbs to greed and agrees to take the case. Carl is soon over his head in a delightfully convoluted tale of old money and old murder, deception, greed, and mayhem that span four generations and two continents. Street smart and self-depreciating, Victor Carl proves he can deal with street thugs and aristocratic bankers with equal ease. While neither fitting the mold of the competent lawyer of a Grisham novel, and certainly not the physically tough hero of a Lehane or Crais mystery, Carl is nonetheless an endearing and effective narrator.

In summary, if you like a spooky old-fashioned thriller mystery with some real skeletons in the closet, engaging characters, intelligent dialog, and don't mind investing some time, (the paperback stretches to 568 pages), "Bitter Truth" is a highly recommended read.

Strong Follow-up to Hostile Witness!
In Veritas, Lashner's second novel featuring Victor Carl and company, he proves that Hostile Witness, was no fluke. Lashner's characters are multidimensional and memorable. His plot is well-developed with interesting sub-plots and his narrative style keeps the flow of the book moving along at a nice pace. Veritas is well-worth reading but it is not without some flaws. Lashner uses so many characters that it is hard at times to keep track of who's who to whom without a scorecard, so to speak. Further, it took a bit too long to tie together the complex main plot and sub-plots, and some of the decriptive passages went on too long. A little more editing would have made Veritas even more enjoyable for me. Nonetheless, Lashner is one of the better writers in his genre today and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of his books.

A Step Above the Legal Thriller
Victor Carl is back in this wild ride of a novel. Victor is approached by an heiress to prove that her sister did not commit suicide. Victor soon finds himself deep in a decades old mystery that involves an "old money" Philadelphia family and his "friends" from the organized crime circuit. Unpredictable, and after a slow start, this book finishes strong in a plot that can be described a "zig-zagging".