While smiling over Mickey’s satisfaction I was hit hard when I read Harry has a raw throat from his latest cancer treatment. He is working for Mickey on Mickey’s personal innocence project. Mickey hired him so Harry could get private health insurance and be enrolled into an experimental treatment program at UCLA. The sense of looming mortality in The Desert Star has been realized.
Harry is driving Mickey but not chauffeuring him. Mickey sits in the front seat. When he forgets the Lincoln Navigator does not move until Mickey remembers and moves from the back seat to the front seat.
Harry, in addition to driving Mickey, is reviewing the numerous letters Mickey has received from inmates stating they are innocent and asking Mickey to represent them. Harry’s skeptical eyes find but two letters worth investigating.
One is from Lucinda Sanz who pleaded nolo contendre to killing her ex-husband Roberto Sanz, a Los Angeles County deputy, and has an 11 year sentence. She had claimed innocence throughout the case but accepted a plea deal to avoid the risk of a life sentence without parole if she were found guilty at a trial.
Harry contacts Renée Ballard who is still working at the recently re-established cold case unit where the 70 year old Harry had been a volunteer in The Desert Star. He asks her for background information. She cleverly avoids compromising access to official files by emailing him newspaper reports of the case.
Harry swiftly notices some weaknesses in the case.
Mickey contacts Frank Silver, Sanz’s defence counsel. He operates out of legal commune. It is a set of offices in which defence lawyers come and go so frequently there are simply slots on the doors for business cards. There are no support staff. Silver proves to be a “weasel” demanding a share in any civil law payments if Sanz is freed before he will release the file to Mickey.
Mickey and Harry go to the prison in Chino to see Sanz. She is steadfast and convincing in her denial of guilt.
The hunt for evidence to free her commences and I was absorbed.
Her son, Eric, now 13 had been with his father for the day before being dropped off late. His father had been shot 12 feet from the house after an argument with Sanz. The police interviewed him. Silver’s failure to interview Eric was a flaw in representation.
Roberto Sanz was part of a “clique” within the Sheriff’s department and had been involved in a shootout with a gang a year before in which he killed a gang member. The police ceased looking into that possible motive when they concluded Sanz killed her ex.
For Silver not talking to a clearly potentially important witness, even at 9 years of age, and not looking into the gang shootout were egregious missteps. Mickey derisively refers to him as Second Place Silver.
And then Harry’s careful review of the evidence finds the thread that can unravel the whole case.
I understand but do not excuse the police, clearly not mentored by Harry, did not bother with an interview or following up on the shooting. They were convinced they had the killer and did not need to talk to anyone who might weaken their case.
In Resurrection Walk Harry and Mickey are actually working together. In past books they would come together for meetings but it was never a true working relationship. They also have more of a brotherly connection. Cancer can build as well as end relationships.
Connelly provides a vivid description of Harry’s treatment:
Bosch could feel the isotope moving in him, coursing coldly through his veins, over the shoulder and across his chest like a broken-dam flood.
Harry has always maintained that representing the accused and the convicted was the dark side and, beyond a few isolated cases for or involving Mickey, he has never worked defense cases. Thus, I was stunned when:
In the seven months they had worked the Sanz case together, Bosch had come to realize that working on the defense side made Haller a long-shot underog. He was like a man on the beach holding a surfboard and looking up at a hundred-foot wave coming in. The power and might of the state was limitless. Haller was just one man making a stand for his client. He was willing to paddle out to that crushing wave. Bosch was beginning to see that there was something noble in that.
I went “yes!” to myself. While uncommon now I think lawyers and investigators benefit in perspective if they have both worked for prosecution and defense.
The habeas corpus application hearing was as tense and driving as any Connelly has written.
The twists and turns were riveting as the evidence and law shifted back and forth. The case was both sophisticated and visceral, as rare a combination as you can find in legal fiction.
In recent years I have decried some of Connelly’s books for bad guys who were so evil as to be caricatures. In Resurrection Walk he returned to his early books with wickedness present but characters who were multi-dimensional.
Harry and Mickey formed a great team. I hope they continue forward together but the tone of the book makes me wonder.
The ending was spectacular with a closing little twist that left me smiling as I read the final page.
It is interesting, Bill, how relationships change when something like cancer is involved. That's what happens in real life, and I'm glad Connelly does it here. But then, that's what I've always liked about him; he can create real, believable characters who develop over time, as Harry and Mickey have. It will be interesting to see whether they work together again.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment Margot. Connelly is gifted at creating and developing characters. I am wondering if Harry will be with us much longer.
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