The Reversal

This book continues the development of the relationship between half-brothers Michael Haller, well-know defense attorney (aka The Lincoln Lawyer) in the LA area, and Harry (Hieronymous) Bosch, veteran homicide detective for the LAPD. Both of these characters have their own series by Michael Connelly. Mickey has been solicited by the DA's office to take on the job of special prosecutor for the re-trial of Jason Jessup, who has spent 24 years in prison for the murder of a 12-year old girl in 1986. His conviction has been overturned on the basis of new DNA evidence, although the DA is still convinced the other evidence in the original investigation stands. Mickey hesitates to "cross the line" from defense to prosecution, but extracts a high price; if he wins in court, the DA will move Mickey's ex-wife Maggie from the backwater Van Nuys office to the main office. Also, she is to be Mickey's 2nd chair on the case, and he gets to choose his own investigator, enter Harry Bosch. Maggie is an experienced and highly successful prosecution attorney with the DA's office, Harry is one of the most seasoned and intuitive homicide detectives on the force, and Mickey knows all the moves a good defense attorney can make--so they form an impressive team. But it is no small feat to prosecute someone for a 25-year-old crime and they are up against one of the best defense attorneys in town. Jessup has energized a whole host of supporters from his cell, and so Mickey makes the strategic decision to ask for no bail;  Jessup is released on his own recognizance--and the police and prosecution can only hope he will screw up and that the LAPD surveillance team will catch him in the act. The plot moves briskly along and Connelly does a good job of keeping all the balls in the air for the various characters. Well worth the read if you are fan of either series. I have previous posts on The Lincoln Lawyer, The Gods of Guilt, The Brass Verdict.

All Our Yesterdays

This is a book by Robert Parker that is not one of his well-known series (Spenser, Jesse Stone, Cole & Hitch, or Sunny Randall) but a stand-alone that looks at three generations of two families: the Sheridans and the Winslows. It is only when  3rd generation Christopher Sheridan is threatened with the loss of his long-term love, Grace Winslow, that it appears the self-destructive cycle of marrying the wrong woman for the wrong reason might be broken. Christropher not only breaks out of his safe ivory tower life as a professor of criminology at Harvard by accepting a special prosecutor's job tasked with investigating gang warfare, but he delves into his history by going back to his roots in Dublin where the trouble all began.
Chris' grandfather, Conn Sheridan, was a soldier with the IRA and became involved with a sympahtetic American woman, Hadley Winslow, during "the Troubles." When he was ordered to leave Dublin, he begged her to come with him, but she had seen their affair as no more than an adventurous fling and had no intention of abandoning her upper class life. She betrayed him to the British and he was put in jail, sentenced to hang. With the help of his colleagues in the IRA, he escaped and went overseas to Boston--not coincidentally, where Hadley was from. He became a cop, then a detective, and then a case came his way that brought Hadley not only back into his life, but also at his mercy.
This is also the story of Gus, Conn's son and Chris' father, who became a police chief, taking money from the gangs. He loves Chris to distraction and would and did do anything for him. But he never found a woman to love until he met the wife of Hadley's son, who was also the mother of Grace, Chris' partner. Yep, the three generations of Winslows had all been romantically involved with the three generations of Sheridans, mostly with disastrous consequences. But everyone is freed from their obsessions in the end--one way or another. As usual, Parker does an outstanding job of creating characters through dialogue even more than action. It is a long'ish book (nearly 500 pages) spanning several decades, but eminently readable.

Death of a Village

These books by M.C. Beaton featuring highland police constable Hamish Macbeth are always light and entertaining, although now that I have discovered a good reader for the audio versions (Graeme Malcolm), that is really my preferred mode because he gets the accents just right! As usual, Hamish is ever so much smarter than those in the police hierarchy above him and manages to solve crimes, small and large, where others fail to even see a crime is being committed. Here he uncovers an insurance scam involving local shop keepers, a more serious conspiracy at a nearby retirement community in which the residents are apparently being killed off in order to gain title to their property, and then a whole town that has been terrified into silence by some ruthless and clever thieves who are plundering a sunken WWII sub off the coast. As usual Hamish does not want to take credit for the crimes he solves because then he would be promoted and have to leave his lazy life in the village of Lochdubh, where he raises sheep and chickens and occasionally poaches fish from the forestry lands. So he usually manages to shift this onto another person involved or else break just enough rules to get reprimanded but not arrested. He has the predictable problems with women in this episode with local reporter Elspeth Grant being the primary player, and the Currie sisters spreading their typically muddled mix of gossip to muddy the waters.

Blue Heaven

Another book by C.J. Box--this one is also not part of his most well-known series with Joe Pickett (see earlier posts on The Highway and Open Season). Deep in the woods of "North Idaho" a young girl and her younger brother, mad at their mom, have taken themselves off with a fishing rod "borrowed" from their mom's newest boyfriend to do some fishing. Instead they run across the scene of an execution as 4 men simultaneously shoot another man. Annie and Willie run and hide, losing their pursuers in the woods. But these are no ordinary men, they are retired LAPD officers with years of skill and training and a huge investment in not getting caught. They simply cannot afford to let the children be found alive. So they hijack the search for the missing children from an inept local sheriff and now the children simply do not know who to trust. After hiding overnight in a barn, they are found by Jess Rawlins, a local rancher who is about to lose everything he and his family have worked to build over the decades. Jess is finally convinced to believe Annie's story and is determined to protect them, in part to make up for the betrayal by his wife and the loss of his son to schizophrenia.
Meanwhile, another retired police officer from southern California, Eduardo Villatoro, has arrived in this little town following leads on money stolen several years earlier from the Santa Anita racetrack. An armored car guard was killed in the robbery and Villatoro wants to close the case even though he is no longer officially working. He talks to the president of the local bank, Jim Hearne, who we come to find out, turned his head the other way when approached about accepting large cash deposits just under the legal reporting limit.
The two cases are tied together and it becomes a race against time, for the children and the bad guys. Author Box ratchets up the tension and keeps you wondering how and if Jess Rawlins can outwit four experienced policemen who will stop at nothing to stay free. Well written and compelling plot.