The Devil to Pay

by Gaylord Dold

A bourbon heartburn woke Jack Darwin at one in the morning. He lay in near dark listening to the fog horns moan across the bay, gripped by anxiety and forgetfulness. He tried to remember how many whiskey sours he’d drunk at Marge’s on Mason Street, counting forward through each drink as if he had willed himself an injection of truth serum. Then, for a moment, just as he rose and put two feet on the carpet, he felt like begging God for an explanation for these Sunday night expeditions to the Financial District, some clear delineation of the loneliness that froze itself inside a person.


With his marriage to the beautiful Karla in disarray and his law practice in a state of neglect, wealthy San Francisco attorney Jack Darwin is also plagued with mounting financial problems, the result of his wife’s heedless extravagance. Then Karla, seeking a profitable divorce, escalates his troubles when she falsely charges him with sexual brutality. Bewildered, Jack turns for help to a fellow lawyer, an aggressive and enigmatic criminal defense attorney named David Avila, who has recently befriended him.


It seems to Darwin that things can’t get worse, but he is proved wrong when he is accused of a series of rape-murders that have occurred in the city. Racked by increasing doubts about the motives of his own defense counsel, Darwin decides it’s more than time to take charge of his own life.


Written with brilliant authenticity by a former criminal defense attorney, The Devil to Pay creates an atmosphere of page-turning tension as police, lawyers, and an innocent victim battle what seem to be insurmountable odds to prevail against a clever and diabolically unpredictable killer.


"The suspense of this cleverly plotted thriller is derived from the old Hitchcockian device of letting the audience—but not the hero—in on the danger….a great thriller."
Booklist (starred review)


"Dold’s lyrical and stylized prose is of a quality rarely encountered in any genre. The bloody end in misty San Francisco testifies to Dold’s skills as a perfect scene-setter and villain’s portraitist—evolutionary advantages that any writer of suspense would love to have."
Publishers Weekly

ebook

First published February 1, 1999

About the author

Gaylord Dold was born in Kansas and raised in southern California during the good old days. He was educated at the University of Kansas, the University of California, and the London School of Economics, where he took an advanced degree in international law. Before becoming a professional writer, he worked as a chauffeur, theater usher, legal services attorney, law professor and volunteer mentor. He is the co-founder and managing editor of Watermark Press which published works like Leaving Las Vegas by John O’Brien, which later became a film directed by Mike Figgis, starring Nicolas Cage and Elizabeth Shue. Dold has published eighteen novels and five travel guides. Many of his crime novels have received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly, Library Journal and Booklist; many have been praised by Marilyn Stasio and others in the New York Times Book Review and in newspapers like the Portland Oregonian, The Washington Post and Boston Herald. His novel Schedule Two was picked as the best crime novel of 1996 by the Portland Oregonian, while his legal thriller The Devil to Pay was picked as one the best ten crime novels of 1998. His novels have been published in Japan, England, and Brazil. Dold has read his work throughout the United States and has conducted numerous writing workshops. He published The Last Man in Berlin in 2004, a novel set in pre-Nazi Germany during the early 1930s. Most recently he has completed and published three contemporary crime novels, two featuring ex-Marine Jack Kilgore, and one a dystopian science fiction thriller called The Swarming Stage.
After twenty-five years of non-stop work, Dold has, since 2006, taken time off to travel and write five books, including novels, a memoir, and a YA that takes place in Wyoming. At present he continues researching non-fiction books about fly fishing on the old Mountain Man rendezvous sites and along the Continental Divide, writing science fiction, and is busy on a new fiction suspense novel about dream research
These days, Dold is at home on the southern prairie. He is an adept fly fisherman, an ardent gardener and an amateur pianist and guitarist. He rides horses poorly and loves dogs. He continues to travel widely in the Caribbean, the south Pacific and the western Rockies.

Visit the author at gaylorddold.com