Book #5 of 2022: The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #4) A competent if somewhat straightforward legal procedural, following the trial of a woman accused of murdering one of the bankers foreclosing on her home. Even more so than Harry Bosch investigations or previous Mickey Haller cases, author Michael Connelly gives us the …
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Book #368 of 2021: The Reversal by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #3) I enjoy both Mickey Haller and his half-brother Harry Bosch as protagonists, and a team-up is always fun for combining their respective lawyer and detective perspectives. This particular exercise feels as though it needs some further twist to really elevate the material, however, …
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Book #356 of 2021: Hook, Line & Sinister: Mysteries to Reel You In edited by T. Jefferson Parker This 2010 collection is… fine. The subtitle is a bit misleading — the entries are generally more like crime thrillers than mysteries per se — but as a charity anthology of original fiction involving fishing, written by …
Book #344 of 2021: Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #14) The Liam Neeson movie Taken came out in 2008, and it sure seems like author Michael Connelly was trying to ride its coattails for this Bosch novel the following year. The start of the story concerns a liquor store robbery-homicide that may have …
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Book #328 of 2021: The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly (Jack McEvoy #2) Reporter Jack McEvoy has been bouncing around on the periphery of the wider ‘Boschiverse‘ for a while, although he hasn’t taken center stage as a viewpoint protagonist since 14 books / 13 years back in The Poet. But he’s here again, once more …
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Book #317 of 2021: The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #2) This sequel is a bit straightforward and anticlimactic, but it remains fun to watch criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller at work, staying narrowly inside the ethical bounds of his profession in general and covering his tracks well when circumstances lead him to …
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Book #305 of 2021: The Overlook by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #13) I admire author Michael Connelly’s commitment to regularly including crooked members of law enforcement among his villains, but I think this particular story actually works better earlier on, when LAPD detective Harry Bosch is just clashing with FBI bureaucracy (no pun intended) over …
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Book #294 of 2021: Echo Park by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #12) Bosch’s latest encounter with a serial killer is a bit rote, and a twist midway through — that the criminal is innocent of one particular murder, which a corrupt attorney got him to confess to as part of a secret deal — is …
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Book #280 of 2021: The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #1) I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of Harry Bosch‘s estranged half-brother, but I’m delighted to find that he’s a lawyer in the Jimmy McGill style, barely scraping by as he represents various miscreants — literally operating an office out of the …
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Book #262 of 2021: The Closers by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #11) After two volumes spent as a private investigator, Harry Bosch has now returned to his roots at the LAPD. (In an afterword, author Michael Connelly explains that his favorite cases are the murders, and it seemed too implausible for a civilian to keep …
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