Pun Salad

The latest from gifted mystery writer Michael Connelly. This is billed as a "Lincoln Lawyer" novel, featuring defense attorney Mickey Haller. But Harry Bosch also plays a major role; Connelly alternates Haller segments (first person) with Bosch segments (third person).

Mickey is usually in it for the money, more power to him. But he gets a thrill from a successful "resurrection walk": seeing a wrongly-convicted prisoner walk free, proven innocent by Mickey. So he's taking on pro bono cases now and then, with Harry offering assistance. They pick a case that sounds intriguing: a woman convicted of murdering her estranged husband, a sheriff's deputy. She maintains her innocence, saying she only pleaded nolo contendre to manslaughter to avoid being found guilty on a full-on murder charge. The evidence seems damning, but is it really?

Another complication: Bosch is undergoing an experimental treatment for his leukemia (probably caused by radiation exposure in a previous story). It's an arduous therapy, and it puts him out of action for a bit. And it has (possible) side effects on cognition, which becomes an issue later in the book.

There's nothing special about Connelly's prose, or his dialog. But he's masterful at plotting. There's courtroom drama, of course. Shady lawyers, possibly corrupt cops, spooky warnings from unknown intruders. I was going to say it's a page turner, but I got the Kindle version, so: it's a screen-poker.

This book made the NYT's list of The Best Mystery Novels of 2021. It is the sceond entry in Stephen Spotswood's "Pentecost and Parker" series; I enjoyed the first one quite a bit. Same here, with only one quibble, below.

The book is set in 1946. The narrator, Willowjean Parker (call her Will), is the Archie Goodwin-style assistant to Lillian Pentecost, a New York City private eye. This book takes them out of the city, down to small-town Virginia, where the circus Will worked at years ago (she ran away from home to join) has a spot of trouble. Ruby, the circus's tattooed lady, has been murdered with a knife in the back. Which makes the prime suspect Valentin, the circus's knife thrower. Who taught Will the tricks of the trade back in the day.

Can they clear Valentin's name and suss out the real culprit? Well, they have a lot of hurdles: the sheriff is pretty sure he's got the right guy, and has little patience with private investigators messing around his town. By sheer coincidence—or is it?—the circus is playing in the town Ruby grew up in, and left under unclear, possibly scandalous, circumstances years back. So not only are the circus folks possible suspects, so are the townsfolk.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. Will is an irreverent, wise-cracking investigator; Mrs. Pentecost has Sherlock-level powers of observation and deduction.

I promised one quibble, and here it is: as a narrator, Will has an unfortunate habit of not telling what she knows, when she knows it. Keeping the reader in the dark for a while, usually only a few pages.

Specifically, Emma Lazarus.

I know I already blogged about Dave Barry’s review of the top events of 2023. But I thought I would excerpt some of his observations of the candidates. From February:

March:

And in April…

OK, just one more, from July:

You should click over to the Miami Herald site, disable Javascript, and find out what else really happened this year.

And just as an aside: Dave Barry makes being hilarious look easy. But if it were that easy, more people would be doing it, and they are not. Hence…

Whatever turn of phrase amuses you here is probably a homage to Dave. And by "a homage to", I mean "shamelessly stolen from".

See what I did there?

Our weekly look at the betting odds shows…

Also of note:

• I bet you're wondering… would Trump be the first non-Confederate barred from office by the 14th Amendment? Eric Boehm has been hitting the history books and finds that Trump Wouldn't Be First Non-Confederate Barred From Office by 14th Amendment.

  Since the end of Reconstruction, Trump is just the second person ruled ineligible for federal office due to that provision.

  The first: Victor Berger, who is perhaps slightly more well known for being the first Socialist elected to Congress.

  Berger was born in Austria and immigrated to the United States as a young man. In 1910, he won a seat in Congress representing Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and served a single two-year term. After being defeated in 1912, Berger remained active in left-wing politics and opposed America's entry into the First World War. In 1918, he was convicted (along with several other Socialist organizers) of having violated the Espionage Act of 1917, which effectively criminalized any criticism of the war effort.

  Despite that conviction—or perhaps because of it—Berger was elected to Congress again in 1918. His campaign called for the country to respect free speech and freedom of the press, and he continued to push for an "early, general, lasting and democratic peace." (Naturally, he also campaigned for a variety of typically terrible Socialist ideas too, like the nationalization of industries.)

  Here's where Section 3 of the 14th Amendment popped up. Congress refused to seat Berger when he showed up to work in January 1919, on the grounds that his Espionage Act conviction was tantamount to engaging in insurrection against the country. The vote was nearly unanimous, 311-1, with the lone dissenting vote cast by a Wisconsin Republican.

  Man, they really didn't care for him.

• Good question. And James Freeman asks it: How Do You Like DeSantis Now?

  With enemies like these, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) is bound to make new friends among caucus and primary voters nationwide. A Florida newspaper has published a scathing editorial about the governor’s education policies, and it seems that his team couldn’t be happier.

  If American parents learned anything from the educational catastrophe of Covid lockdowns, it’s that teachers union bosses are not their allies. As learning losses spiked and isolated adolescents suffered from a host of mental challenges, union officials who should have been advocates of immediate reopening kept demanding delays and all manner of unnecessary changes to school buildings and operations in the name of safety—without any rigorous analysis of costs and benefits.

  Mr. DeSantis would have none of it, driving an early reopening in Florida and pursuing a sensible strategy of focused protection. The idea was to help those most at risk while allowing people at low risk to live their lives and maintain a thriving society. He also resolved to shift power over education back to parents, where it belongs. Now a hostile media outlet is providing a helpful reminder.

  The DeSantis-hostile Miami Herald editorialized about the woes of the United Teachers of Date, which is precariously close to being decertified as a bargaining agent. Thanks to (a) a Florida law that requires 60% of employees for which the union purports to bargain to be dues-paying members and (b) Florida being a right-to-work state.

• A slow news week and you get slow news. Dan McLaughlin wonders Is Nikki Haley Ready for Prime Time?

  The flap over Nikki Haley botching an answer to an audience question in New Hampshire about the origins of the Civil War has produced the usual flood of hyperbole, with Democrats accusing her of being some sort of racist for not saying “slavery” and partisans of her primary opponents declaring her career over. That’s what you get when you combine campaign silly season with a slow news week over the holidays. Still, we shouldn’t write off the real meaning of all this: It reminds us that Haley still hasn’t really been stress-tested enough in the true limelight of a presidential race to know how ready she is for the prime time of a general election.

  The "flap" was the subject of three separate stories in the Saturday edition of my pathetic local paper, Foster's Daily Democrat. Reason? I think Nikki is the candidate they would least like to see run against Biden in November. So if she gives them an excuse, the knives are out.

  But as for Dan's point: the question, as always, is "compared to who?" If your criterion for a good candidate is how well they respond to gotcha questions, fine, but let's judge all the candidates that way.