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For a guy with a bum hip, Harlan Donnally continues getting around with more ease and is far better at intimidating the criminal element than I am. That probably owes a lot to his creator, Steven Gore, knowing his way around the San Francisco bay area justice system better than most. In his third Donnally novel, "Night is the Hunter" – and Donnally is now tied with attorney Graham Gage at three books apiece – Gore is in fine literary form, zinging curveballs at loyal readers just when they think they know his irrepresible former cop turned private eye. STEVEN GORE podcast excerpt: "'Night is the Hunter' is kind of challenging. There are some hard legal concepts in this book. I want to use Harlan Donnally and the judge to teach the reader the concepts because these are the concepts that the characters are going to be thinking about as the book goes on. And that's the way the real world works in crime investigations." This time around, Gore has written a tale that bops and weaves so much that you can’t possibly know where it is leading. It also continues to build Donnally’s backstory – new details may emerge about the crossfire in which he was himself injured years earlier. And we learn more about his personal life. Or do we? Steven Gore • •