The Lincoln Lawyer Returns

In a difficult economy, the criminal defense business is not all that it used to be and so Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, is reduced to defending clients who are about to lose their homes to foreclosure. One of his clients, a not very pleasant woman named Lisa Trammel is not content simply to let Mickey wage the legal battle on her behalf. She begins her own campaign on line and in the streets to defend herself and others against what she perceives to be the villainy of the greedy bankers who are attempting to kick them out of their homes.

Lisa becomes enough of a nuisance that WestLand Financial, the bank that is attempting to foreclose on her home, secures a restraining order against her. Shortly thereafter, Mitchell Bondurant, the banker who heads the mortgage department at WestLand, is savagely killed in the bank's parking garage. Critical evidence points to Lisa Trammel as the killer, but she insists that she has respected the restraining order and that she was nowhere near the bank the morning that Bondurant was murdered.

Lisa retains Mickey to defend her against the murder charge and Mickey suddenly finds himself back in court, doing what he loves. He can hardly love his client, though, who turns out to be a major pain in the neck and who complicates the defense in a variety of ways. Mickey constructs an alternate theory to explain the crime and the question is whether he can get a jury to buy his suggestion before his client torpedoes the case and Mickey along with it.

This is another cleverly constructed legal thriller from Michael Connelly with a "ripped-from-the-headlines" storyline. The courtroom scenes, in particular, are very well done and will keep you on the edge of your seat. As in all of the Haller books, there is also an ongoing subplot involving Mickey's relationship with his ex-wife and their daughter. Connelly's fans and others who enjoy legal thrillers but who have not yet made Mickey Haller's acquaintance are sure to enjoy this page-turner of a book.

***SPOILER ALERT*** PLEASE DO NOT READ ANY FARTHER UNLESS YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW THE BOOK ENDS!

As a side note, one of the things that intrigues me about this series is the fact that in these books, as in real life, virtually all of the clients that Mickey Haller sees as a defense attorney are actually guilty. This is still a fairly unusual thing to happen in a legal thriller. This genre originated, as a practical matter, with Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason series. Mason remains probably the most famous fictional criminal defense attorney of all, and yet amazingly all eighty-five of the clients he defended in this series were actually innocent!

This has continued to be the case with most other books like this. As the book progresses, our defense attorney hero must not only conduct a brilliant defense of his or her client, but he or she must also expose the Real Killer in the process.

To Connelly's credit, he doesn't do this. Still, though, he seems uncomfortable with the idea of allowing his hero, Attorney Haller, to exercise his considerable talents in the service of allowing a bad person to escape his or her just desserts. In the last Haller novel, Connelly addressed the issue by allowing Haller to switch sides and join the prosecution. In this book, as in The Lincoln Lawyer, we have another twist at the end that allows Mickey to achieve justice in spite of the brilliant defense he has mounted. To my mind, this tactic worked well the first time around, but I'm not so sure it's as plausible here. Connelly may have resolved the issue with another totally unexpected twist at the end of this book, and it will be interesting to see the direction that the author takes Haller in the future.

On the Seamy Side of Galveston

Roy Cady is having what can only be described as an especially bad day. In the afternoon, he discovers that he is terminally ill. Later that evening, he realizes that his boss, a New Orleans loan shark, is almost certainly setting him up to be killed. Roy manages to turn the tables on his would-be assassins and winds up on the run with a sexy young girl and her infant sister.

The trio makes its way to Galveston and holes up in a fleabag motel. There, Roy's larger story unfolds along with that of Rocky, the older of the two girls that Roy is attempting to rescue. Roy and Rocky face insurmountable odds, and Roy debates throughout the wiser course of action: Should he remain with the girls or abandon them and head out on his own? The headstrong Rocky does not make matters any easier and before long, Roy finds himself drawn inexorably into a world of emotional and physical turmoil.

This is a very well-written, carefully constructed novel with some unique characters. The settings are particularly memorable and, probably needless to say, this is not Jimmy Webb or Glen Campbell's "Galveston." Fans of noir-ish crime fiction should enjoy it a great deal.

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Introducing Jack Reacher

This is the book that introduced Lee Child's popular character, Jack Reacher in 1997. Reacher is a former military cop who's been made redundant by the end of the cold war. After spending his entire life in the military (Reacher grew up in a military family), he's now completely on his own, footloose and fancy-free. After spending much of his life abroad, he's wandering about the country, getting to know the U.S. up close and personal. As will continue to be the case, Reacher travels light, with nothing more than the clothes on his back, paying cash, traveling by bus and staying off the grid.

On a whim, Reacher has a bus driver drop him off at the interchange for tiny Margrave, Georgia. Reacher has heard a story about an ancient Blues man who once spent time in the town and decides to check it out. He walks fourteen miles into town, orders a cup of coffee in a diner, and is promptly arrested for murder.

Reacher knows that he hasn't killed anyone, at least not in Margrave and not for some time, so he's obviously mystified. He soon discovers that there are a lot of weird things going on in this tiny, pristine town where the townfolk, or at least a good number of them, are harboring some strange secrets. Reacher couldn't care less. He just wants to get clear of the murder charges, get back on the bus, and resume his wandering life. But he quickly develops a personal stake in the murder case, which is decidedly bad news for the evildoers.

Before long, the bodies are piling up left and right, and Reacher is contributing more than his fair share to the carnage. This is a cleverly-plotted book, although it does depend on a coincidence that's almost too huge to swallow. Still, it's a fun read that sets the template for the future books in the series. This is essentially "Shane" brought forward into the Twentieth (and now the Twenty-first) century. Jack Reacher is the mysterious stranger with something approaching mystical powers, who rides into a troubled town, albeit on a Greyhound rather than a horse. He cleans up the town, disposes of the bad guys, dallies briefly with a beautiful, sexy woman that he will have to abandon in the end, and then, once his job is done, he rides off into the sunset.

What's not to like? The formula has worked very well through sixteen books now, and Jack Reacher has become an international favorite. Those who have somehow missed him would do well to start with Killing Floor.

Another Early Classic from Lawrence Block

This is among the best of Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series, which is saying quite a lot. Set in the mid-1970s, it finds Scudder divorced, working as an unlicensed P.I. in New York City and essentially living in the bars that dot the neighborhood around his small hotel room.

The book opens with the brazen robbery of an after-hours saloon that happens to be owned by some scary Irish brothers that no smart person would ever think to screw around with. Matt is present at the time of the robbery and the owners ask him to look into it, offering a $10,000.00 reward for info leading to the robbers. At virtually the same time, the wife of a casual barroom acquaintance, Tommy Tillary, is murdered. Tillary becomes a suspect and asks Matt to help clear him. If all that weren't bad enough, another of Scudder's friends is being blackmailed and wants Matt to help arrange the payoff.

As the book progresses, Scudder works on each of the three problems with varying degrees of commitment and interest. Each of the three cases is interesting in and of itself, but as always in these books, it's the setting and the characters, especially Scudder himself, that keep you coming back and that make you regret it every time you come to the last page. Lawrence Block has created in these novels a world and a cast unlike any other--for my money easily the best, the most vivid and most interesting of any in crime fiction. I've read this book at least three or four times by now, and I'll be anxiously waiting for it again the next time I make my way through this series.

Alone on the Triple Border

Triple Crossing: A Novel takes place mostly at the intersection of politics and the "war" on drugs along the perilous U.S. border with Mexico. It's a book that will probably cause you to throw your hands up in despair; it may also break your heart.

Valentine Pescatore is a young man who has escaped a troubled past in Chicago and joined the Border Patrol. He's still trying to figure out who he is and what his place in life might be. More sympathetic to the illegal immigrants he encounters than many other agents, Valentine bridles at the callous, macho attitude of his direct supervisor. Unsure of himself and trying to fit in, Valentine will party with the man and follow his orders, but he's still uncomfortable about the situation in which he finds himself.

Leo Mendez, a former journalist, has been appointed head of a special Mexican task force, known as the Diogenes Group, and has been charged with the seemingly impossible task of rooting out corruption within the Mexican police. Isabel Puente is a U.S. federal agent who joins forces with Mendez in an effort to bring down a powerful Mexican family that has strong ties both to the government and to the Mexican criminal network.

When Pescatore illegally chases an immigrant back across the border into Mexico, he falls into the clutches of Puente who gives him a stark choice: he can either be punished and perhaps jailed for crossing the border in violation of the law, or he can join her team as an undercover agent.

Pescatore takes door number two, in part because he is strongly attracted to Puente. A reader knows that in any normal thriller, things will immediately go terribly wrong and poor Valentine will find himself in deep, deep trouble. But this is no ordinary thriller. The author, Sebastian Rotella, is an award-winning reporter and a Pulitzer finalist who has covered the U.S.-Mexican border for over twenty years. He is the author of a previous, non-fiction book, Twilight on the Line: Underworlds and Politics at the U.S.-Mexico Border, and he obviously knows the territory. This book has the ring of truth, and given the setup, the reader knows that Valentine's troubles are going to be way beyond those of the normal thriller's protagonist.

When things do go sideways, Pescatore finds himself alone in South America's infamous Triple Border, a lawless no-man's land of smugglers and violent criminals. The bad guys don't completely trust him; his own people think he's gone over to the other side, and the prospect of any sort of justice--for Valentine or for anyone else--seems as remote as the Triple Border itself.

This book makes an excellent companion piece to Don Winslow's excellent book, The Power of the Dog. It's not quite on a par with Winslow's book but it's close, and anyone who enjoyed The Power of the Dog and anyone interested in the situation along the nation's border with Mexico should find it an enormously worthwhile and enjoyable read.        

All He Does Is Drive

This is an excellent contemporary noir novel in which a character becomes caught up by circumstances largely beyond his control and must then struggle to somehow survive.

The main protagonist, Driver, is a stunt driver for the movies, and there's none better. But he also moonlights driving for robberies, and the thrill is principally in the driving itself rather than in the monetary rewards. He makes his position clear to anyone who wants to employ his services: "I drive. That's all I do. I don't sit in while you're planning the score or while you're running it down. You tell me where we start, where we're headed, where we'll be going afterwards, what time of day. I don't take part, I don't know anyone, I don't carry weapons. I drive."

Apart from his driving, Driver leads a minimalist existence, moving frequently, paying cash, leaving virtually no trail. But then, as must always happen in a book like this, things go wrong on a number of levels; Driver winds up alienating some very bad people and the game is on.

This is a beautifuly written book, lean and taut without a single wasted word. One hopes that the release of the movie made from the book will finally garner for it and for James Sallis the wider attention that both he and this book certainly deserve.

Goodbye to the Assassin

Set in 2045, this is the concluding volume in Robert Ferrigno's Assassin trilogy. A devious and ambitious one hundred and fifty year-old character called the Old One dreams of creating a Muslim Caliphate under his own rule. He's been laboring on the project for years (and through the two previous books in this series, Prayers for the Assassin and Sins of the Assassin). As part of the scheme, years earlier, he planted suitcase nukes in New York, Washington, D.C. and Mecca.

In the aftermath of the attacks, the United States crumbled and was divided, essentially, into two-parts, the Belt, dominated by Christians, and the Republic, dominated by Muslims. As this book opens, both regions are threatened by the powerful Aztlan Empire to the south, which is nibbling away at the former U.S., determined at a minimum to regain the territory that the U.S. annexed from Mexico in the middle of the 19th century.

While the Old One manipulates events from behind the scenes, sowing chaos in a fashion calculated to advance his own ambitions, some strategically placed people in the Republic are developing plans to reunite the Belt and the Republic in the hope of restoring the glory of the former U.S. While the politicians and others maneuver, Rakkim Epps, a moderate Muslim and genetically enhanced warrior fights the evil-doers (as he has in the previous books) and attempts to support all things good and virtuous in a decaying world. Rakkim is married to Sarah, a gifted historian who is key to the reunification plans, but in this book, he is also sorely tempted by Baby, the scheming, voluptuous daughter of the Old One.

Ferrigno has created in these books a chilling vision of the near future and a memorable cast of characters. Readers who find the premise appealing will certainly want to read the books in order, although any one of them could be read as a stand-alone.