Harry Bosch may have left the police, but his life’s mission hasn’t changed. He still wants to see justice done… because, as his mantra goes: ‘everyone counts or nobody counts‘. Working with (or for) Mickey Haller wouldn’t be his first choice, but his half-brother, the ‘Lincoln Lawyer’ has promised two things: that Harry’s loyalty to justice won’t be abused in the name of a judicial gotcha headline…. he can simply look through letters sent seeking Haller’s attention to see if any plea genuinely seems like a valid case of a miscarriage of justice and then act accordingly… and there’s always the fact that his employment will help Harry with the medical insurance he needs to cover treatment for cancer.
But of the very few potentially genuine cases that Harry finds in the huge pile of mail, one sticks out. Lucinda Sanz is halfway through a prison term for apparently murdering her ex-husband, a police-officer – a crime to which she originally plead guilty. But now she’s asking for an appeal and the more Harry looks at the case, the more the key ‘facts’ seem to contradict each other. However, as much as Harry and Mickey are invested in working out the full truth, there are other people who would like the case’s original verdict to stand…
*spoilers*
Every Michael Connelly novel comes with certain expectations, not least because almost all of the tomes in recent memory are instant bestsellers – and because they are immediately readable, enjoyable and involving. Resurrection Walk – out this month – is, in many ways, a double helping. This isn’t the first time that Connelly has teamed his literary half-brothers in one story, showing how each man has an honour code, albeit a different variant of such. Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch – even as a private citizen – prefers to work inside the system he believes in, but prepared to call it out if he finds it wanting. Mickey Haller is something of a trickster, a famous, perhaps infamous lawyer who believes the system is already inherently stacked against him and his clients and therefore he’ll use every tactic at his disposal if it gets the job done. The results always tend to slightly favour one character over the other, but here, though it’s weighted in Haller’s direction (this is, after all, the courtroom strand of the Connellyverse and the book is formally given ‘A Lincoln Lawyer thriller‘ cover description) Bosch gets enough ‘screen-time’ to make it feel like a genuine team-up and there’s even a cameo scene for the author’s most recent creation, Detective Renée Ballard. But it’s Haller who, once again, gets the first-person narrative sections and it’s his courtroom tactics that power the piece forward.
Bosch may be aging, not always gracefully, but this isn’t the first – nor likely the last – novel to see him tackle the red flags along the thin blue line… and Connelly has once again woven his timely, procedural alchemy and immediately placed us in a world that is familiar to loyal readers but compelling and exciting enough for new converts…
Murders and crimes tend not to work in isolation and Connelly often weaves in a variety of simultaneous investigations through his work. Resurrection Walk initially offers up us a potential selection of cases and for a while it’s not clear which one is going to assume centre-stage. But it quickly settles into the main arc of what could be a major miscarriage of justice. Lucinda Sanz is serving time for murdering her ex-husband, a cop. Her conviction is partly based on her turbulent relationship with him, the fact he was slain right outside their house after an argument and GSR (gunshot-residue) on her hands confirms she fired a gun… and, the clincher, she originally plead guilty. But the more Bosch looks at the case, the more the likely clashes with the impossible. The confession came at the advice of a compromised lawyer and though GSR might seem like a slam-dunk, there’s inconsistencies in its collection – but almost everything else is circumstantial and even contradictory. It’s the kind of righteous case that Haller thrives upon and the kind that Bosch is willing to pursue if the wrong person is behind bars. Of course, it’s never that cut-and-dry and the different, sometimes conflicting approaches of Haller and Bosch make as good drama as the forces aligned against them.
In recent books (such as 2019 The Night Fire) we’ve learned that Bosch’s exposure to plutonium (in the The Overlook), appears to have triggered cancer (specifically chronic myeloid leukemia) and last year’s release Desert Star painted a more nihilistic Bosch, making some far more pointed choices about ‘justice’ than the younger, healthier version would likely have felt comfortable with. Resurrection Walk‘s title might refer to the moment where a wrongly-convicted person walks out of prison, but there’s also the feeling that Connelly wants to reassure his readers that Bosch isn’t about to shuffle off the mortal coil any time soon. Connelly has spoken in interviews about the responses to Desert Star‘s revelations, with actual doctors discussing what treatment Bosch might receive and he’s diligently explored some of the technical aspects in this book (using Bosch’s daughter Maddie to interrogate her father about keeping up with a medical trial in which he’s participating). It successfully shows both Bosch’s strengths and weaknesses, the wisdom and slightly frailer elements that only come with age.
In that sense, Connelly’s writing, always strong, has also become even more layered over time. The novels that featured Bosch as a police-detective showed the way good officers try and do their jobs, but it never veered away from some of the questionable behaviour of individuals and political pressures on (and in) the police force itself. However, there’s been a noticeable approach in recent novels, reflecting Bosch’s circumstances and choices in relation to other characters (Mickey, Renée etc.) and perhaps noting society’s criticisms of corruption, accountability, checks and balances. Bosch may be aging, not always gracefully, but this isn’t the first – nor likely the last – novel to see him tackle the red flags along the thin blue line.
In many ways, accepting that the Netflix/freevee rights issues/divide over The Lincoln Lawyer and Bosch: Legacy respectively, keep the siblings apart on tv, Resurrection Walk still feels like the kind of story that would work just as well on screen and perhaps the success of the tv strands of Connelly’s creation have influenced his work in that sense of style and pacing. Either way, Connelly has once again woven his timely, procedural alchemy and immediately placed us in a world that is familiar to loyal readers but compelling and exciting enough for new converts. Inside or outside the courtroom, Connelly is still king.
Resurrection Walk is published by Orion in the UK and Little, Brown and Company in the US (link here) on 7th November and can be purchased online or at your local bookstore…
Michael Connelly is also auctioning a reader’s named appearance in his next book in aid of ‘Homes for our Troops‘. More details here…
- Story9
