The book John McNellis wished existed when he started out. Also the one that might talk you out of starting at all.

John McNellis learned real estate the same way he learned the facts of life. On the street. Deal by deal — often acquiring experience just after he needed it.

Over 40 years, he's developed shopping centers, mixed-use projects, and office buildings across Northern California, cofounding McNellis Partners in the mid-1980s with the same two partners he works with today. He's made money, lost money, gotten crushed by hidden granite, burned through escrows, survived recessions, and — somewhere along the way — figured out what actually matters in this business.

This book is the result.

Brand-new lawyer Michael O’Brien has no clue the case his law firm handed him is a total loser. That’s because he would rather chase women, play basketball, or do almost anything other than practice law. O'Brien is struggling with the drudgery first-year associates face, especially since it’s the swinging ‘70s in San Francisco.

He’s just too good-looking, easily bored, and cocky to care. But when Malcolm Knox, one of the city’s wealthiest men, drops dead, the young man from Boston is suddenly charged with finding $50 million in bearer bonds missing from the estate.

Given his myriad distractions—he’s wooing a former fashion model who owns a small bakery chain—O’Brien seems destined to fail. As missteps accumulate, and practicing law becomes dangerous O'Brien risks losing his job, his girlfriend, and even his life.

"Scout's Honor is riveting. John McNellis writes with an unstoppable drive, paving the way with telling details about places and people. A story about how the past is never the past, Ross MacDonald could not have done it any better. I very much enjoyed this novel." —Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lincoln Lawyer and the Harry Bosch series

A Vietnam Veteran's Journey from the Battlefield to Real Estate Empire

After losing everything but his life, a young man forges a new identity in the dangerous jungles of Vietnam and rises to become a real estate magnate in New York City in this epic tale of redemption.

From desperate drug smuggler to decorated Marine to Manhattan real estate tycoon—one man's extraordinary journey to reclaim his honor