We expect our judges to be honest and wise. Their integrity and impartiality are the bedrock of the entire judicial system. We trust them to ensure fair trials, to protect the rights of all litigants, to punish those who do wrong, and to oversee the orderly and efficient flow of justice.
But what happens when a judge bends the law or takes a bribe? It’s rare, but it happens.
Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct. After nine years with the Board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption.
But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business with a new identity. He now goes by the name Greg Myers, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined. And not just crooked judges in Florida. All judges, from all states, and throughout U.S. history.
What’s the source of the ill-gotten gains? It seems the judge was secretly involved with the construction of a large casino on Native American land. The Coast Mafia financed the casino and is now helping itself to a sizable skim of each month’s cash. The judge is getting a cut and looking the other way. It’s a sweet deal: Everyone is making money.
But now Greg wants to put a stop to it. His only client is a person who knows the truth and wants to blow the whistle and collect millions under Florida law. Greg files a complaint with the Board on Judicial Conduct, and the case is assigned to Lacy Stoltz, who immediately suspects that this one could be dangerous.
Dangerous is one thing. Deadly is something else.
My notes: This is yet another typical procedural thriller. We know the villain, it is a matter of how to set about catching them. It introduces a feisty female detective, there is a Native American angle, and corruption on a mega scale set, as it is, in the current Trump era. A body fairly early on, tells the reader there really is something to chase. The very convenient paper tissue with the blood sample sets the investigation rolling. But is rather boring, disappointing, procedural with no suspense or twists. All too real in these days where corruption prevails and if you are one of the powerful elite you get away with it. I am reading this at the time of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Nothing surprises me. The greed of the judge is huge - emeralds, rubies, all that cash. Greedy women. Epilogue, with no twists but the character Myers who disappears early on turns up. convenience of blood sample on tissue.
The Late Show by Michael Connelly
Detective Renée Ballard works 'The Late Show', the notorious graveyard shift at the LAPD.
It's thankless work for a once-promising detective, keeping strange hours in a twilight world of crime.
Some nights are worse than others. And tonight is the worst yet.
Two shocking cases, hours apart: a brutal assault, and a multiple murder with no suspects.
Ballard knows it is always darkest before dawn. But what she doesn't know - yet - is how deep her investigation will take her into the dark heart of her city, the police department and her own past...
A new thriller introducing a driven young detective trying to prove herself in the LAPD.
Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she’s been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor.
But one night she catches two cases she doesn’t want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn. Against orders and her own partner’s wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night. As the cases entwine they pull her closer to her own demons and the reason she won’t give up her job no matter what the department throws at her.
What I thought:
Call me a reading snob but I would never choose a Michael Connelly, this was the choice of fellow reader in my Splinter Book Group. I did not want to read the book in truth, and I laboured through yet another police procedural as I saw it. But there were some interesting slants, our protagonist Renee Ballard is banished to 'The Late Show' - the so-called Graveyard Shift, for making a complaint against a colleague. And in Ballard we have a principled feminist, charismatic, her passion for surf-bording, her attachment to her dog Lola, staying at her grandmother's. I can see she might get a champion's following as a for example has Jack Reacher. The book closes on a subtle cliffhanger , that is a clever device. I listened to this title on Audible, it was useful adjunct to ironing bed linen and gardening.
What I thought:
Call me a reading snob but I would never choose a Michael Connelly, this was the choice of fellow reader in my Splinter Book Group. I did not want to read the book in truth, and I laboured through yet another police procedural as I saw it. But there were some interesting slants, our protagonist Renee Ballard is banished to 'The Late Show' - the so-called Graveyard Shift, for making a complaint against a colleague. And in Ballard we have a principled feminist, charismatic, her passion for surf-bording, her attachment to her dog Lola, staying at her grandmother's. I can see she might get a champion's following as a for example has Jack Reacher. The book closes on a subtle cliffhanger , that is a clever device. I listened to this title on Audible, it was useful adjunct to ironing bed linen and gardening.
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