Pun Salad

Kind of a milestone: I've been playing catchup with Michael Connelly books for at least twenty years. (I think; I started this project before I was diligent about logging my book-reading.) And this one is his most recent, the next one not coming out until November. So I'm caught up, yay!

The protagonist/narrator is Mickey Haller, ace defense lawyer. And he's in trouble from the get-go. He's pulled over by a cop one night for a missing license plate. When the cop notices apparently bodily fluids dripping from the car's trunk, the lid is popped, and, hey, it's a murder victim. And Mickey quickly gets sent to the slammer to await trial.

It's a frame-up, of course. But it's a very elaborate one. The victim is one of Mickey's old clients, a scam artist who didn't pay his legal fees. And physical evidence indicates that the murder occurred in Mickey's own garage.

It looks grim, but Mickey is fortunate to have Harry Bosch on his side. (Harry's just a supporting character here, but it's good to see him.) He pulls out an obscure clue, overlooked by police detectives in their rush to sew up their case against Mickey. Eventually, the outline of the conspiracy against Mickey gets revealed.

A very decent page-turner (or, since I read the Kindle version mostly on an iPad, screen-swiper). Connelly is as good at lawyer procedurals as he is with police procedurals. It's set amidst the beginning of the Covid pandemic, which forms a backdrop to Mickey's efforts to prove his innocence. And that's the deal: with his normal clients, he's satisfied with a "not guilty" verdict. But his goal here is total exoneration, a higher bar to clear, dictating his strategy at a number of points.