Resurrection Walk

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 11 SEPT. 2023

Bestseller Connelly's paint-by-numbers seventh legal thriller featuring Mickey Haller (after 2020's The Law of Innocence) again teams the L.A. defense attorney with his half-brother, ex-LAPD officer Harry Bosch, who holds down his own Connelly series. After freeing a man wrongly convicted of murder with Bosch's help, Haller has launched a pro bono "in-house innocence project" to investigate questionable convictions, with Bosch vetting potential clients. Bosch recommends Haller look into the case of Lucinda Sanz, who pled no contest to manslaughter five years earlier for fatally shooting her ex-husband Roberto, an L.A. County sheriff's deputy. Sanz now claims she was innocent and entered the plea to avoid the risk of a life sentence after a trial. As the case never went to a jury, the records are sparse, but the investigative partners find enough question marks—including a key witness who admits that his statements were coerced—to pursue a federal claim that Sanz has been unlawfully imprisoned. Meanwhile, the powers that be, including some shadowy figures in the LAPD, will do everything they can to keep the case closed. Connelly is on autopilot here: the courtroom theatrics are bog standard, and much of the dialogue lands with a thud. This disappoints.