VERITAS

Written by William Lashner

Narrated by Ken Howard

""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 Belize 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Feb 13, 2007
• ISBN: 9780061344367

William Lashner

New York Times bestselling author William Lashner is the author of seven suspense novels that have been published in more than a dozen languages throughout the world. A graduate of the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, he lives with his family outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Reviews for VERITAS

[robertalea-223265 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked this one better than the first.

[portialong · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is not my usual genre but I really enjoyed the author's writing style. My spouse found some of the twists and turns rather predictable but I enjoyed them.

[joycepa_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Also published as Veritas2nd in the Victor Carl, Philadelphia criminal defense lawyer, series.Connection with the Philadelhia mob may have gotten Victor Carl out of debt and even saved his life, but the price has been high--a steady stream of small-time hoodlums whose fees are paid by the mob. Carl has lost none of his thirst for money, big money, so when a rich Main Line heiress, Caroline Shaw, drops into his lap, so to speak, all he can see is the potential millions to be gained from a 30% contingency fee--if he can get her to sign the agreement. But collection will take him to strange place--the seemingly cursed house, Veritas, of the rich family and Belize--put him smack in the middle of a war for control of the city’s mob.I had a hard time getting into this actually very good story because initially it seemed more like a Gothic tale than an interesting variant on the police procedural genre, and I really, really don’t like Gothic. Fortunately, I stuck with the book, and it turned out, once the back story was set up, to be a faced-paced thriller as well. Carl is not terribly complex nor very likable, but one of his sidekicks, private detective Morris Kaputsin, an older Russian Orthodox Jew, is most certainly the best character in the book.Good plot, very good writing, well-written denouément--an enjoyable read, even though not as good as Lashner’s debut in the series, Hostile Witness. Recommended.

[mediawrite · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the second of William Lashner's books featuring Victor Carl, a flawed loser of a lawyer that we somehow still root for. This and the previous (Hostile Witness) are the best, although I stopped reading after four because Victor Carl became less flawed and thereby less interesting. I think it's in Veritas that there's a brilliantly funny scene featuring mobsters riding a limo in a funeral procession...if I tell you more I might spoil the humor. Read this and Hostile Witness--both very well written and great reads. (I don't read great literature; I read for entertainment but I can't stand a poorly written book--all the books I add here are well written.)