Crime novelist Michael Connelly just keeps getting better with 'Resurrection Walk'

Michael Connelly has written 31 books featuring now-former L.A. homicide detective Harry Bosch and/or his half-brother, defense attorney Mickey Haller, known as the "Lincoln lawyer" because his car is his office. I've read most and reviewed many but now have a problem.

I've run out of laudatory adjectives.

His latest, "Resurrection Walk," does not make my life any easier. It easily ranks among his best, which means a lot because I don't think he has a worst.

Spurred on by the high he gets "when the manacles come off and the last metal doors slide open like the gates of heaven, and a man or woman declared innocent walks into the waiting arms of family, resurrected in life and law," Haller has started a mini-Innocence Project in his practice.

He's hired Bosch as a part-time investigator, to filter the dozens of requests for help he receives. Bosch's job: vet the official documents. "After years of writing them, he had a facility for digesting reports," with Bosch almost instinctively knowing where a prosecutor or cop fudged facts.

He quickly finds irregularities surrounding the case of Lucinda Sanz, accused of killing her husband, a deputy sheriff. On the advice of a less-than-stellar attorney, Sanz pleaded nolo contendere (accepting a conviction) to voluntary manslaughter, but insists she is innocent. Bosch spots enough inconsistencies in the paperwork to throw some of the evidence into question. Though he finds the idea of helping an accused cop killer anathema, he moves forward.

Of course he's right. Of course Haller will get a reversal. Probably. But the fun is in the journey. Connelly's skill as a writer draws you in and keeps you there.

It's no secret that cops and prosecutors sometimes partner to keep an innocent person in jail rather than put a blotch on their records. It's maddening and Connelly uses that to involve and manipulate — in the best sense of the word — readers. But, just when you think Haller has presented evidence that exonerates Lucinda, the prosecuting attorney finds a way to keep it out of court.

Connelly's expertise allows him to make it all convincing. He knows about gunshot residue tests, why Haller must go to federal (not state) court to get his client released and even experimental drug treatments Bosch endures to battle his cancer. The novelist's command of facts and his logic propel the book forward. There's never a this-doesn't-make-sense moment.

Bosch and Haller are old-fashioned heroes, even when their livelihoods and personal safety are threatened. I like that. In "Resurrection Walk," both have their homes broken into as warnings not to continue pursuing Lucinda's case, but they do.

Yes, I know they're just fictional characters, but the late Tina Turner was wrong. We can always use another hero.

Curt Schleier is a critic in New Jersey.

Resurrection Walk

By: Michael Connelly.

Publisher: Little, Brown. 416 pages. $30.