NY: Morrow, 1986.
Tony Cassella is a New York private detective with a whole lot of history and an entire crew of monkeys on his back. He’s offered a case by a fancy Wall Street law firm (and immediately triples his usual rates) with the task of finding out what one of their attorneys, Edgar Good, convicted of embezzlement, has been telling the SEC in an attempt to stay out of Attica.
Boston: Godine, 1998.
The author notes in the Foreword that “what has always interested me most in history is not the lives of great men or the analysis of the social, political, and economic forces that determined the great events, but rather the attempt to recreate a sense of what it was like to be an ordinary person living in a given era.” Wow. A sentiment and a view of the past that is exactly after my own heart. (more…)
NY: Little, Brown, 2011.
The last few entries in Connelly’s long-running police procedural series featuring Detective Harry Bosch of the LAPD have, frankly, been pretty weak, as if the author has become as weary of his character as Bosch is of the world in general. Perhaps as an antidote, he began a new series a few years ago, also set in Los Angeles, starring Mickey Haller, a defense attorney (and therefore the natural enemy of the police), known as the “Lincoln lawyer” because he doesn’t maintain an actual office, preferring to do business from the fully-equipped back seat of an armored, bullet-proof Lincoln Town Car while being driven from client to courthouse to police division all over Greater LA.
NY: HarperCollins, 1996.
Isaacs has never really hit the big time as a novelist, though every one of her dozen-plus novels has made the New York Times best seller list, and — in my opinion — she has never produced less than a very good story. But this one may be her best. Lee White is a middle-aged Long Island criminal defense attorney (and ex-assistant DA) with a client she can’t quite figure out. Norman Torkelson, a talented con man who has had a long and reasonably successful career stealing the life savings of lonely women, is awaiting trial for the strangulation of his latest scam victim.
As a retired public librarian (very large system in a very large city), I've been writing book reviews for the consumption of other people for more than 40 years. Since 1999, I've been posting my reviews to a personal website, but I'm now shifting my reviewing jones to this blog.
I have been a semi-professional genealogist since the 1960s and I have another blog of book reviews in the field of family research! To read those, go to BookSmith's Genealogy Book Reviews.
