Resurrection Walk is a 2023 mystery novel by Michael Connelly.
It it Connelly's seventh novel to feature as protagonist the lawyer Mickey Haller. As this story begins, Mickey is enjoying a moment of professional triumph. He has just gotten a man named Jorge Ochoa sprung from prison, after Ochoa served 14 years for a murder he didn't commit. Mickey enjoys the sense of righteousness from doing a good deed, but he also looks forward to the lucrative lawsuit against the city for wrongful imprisonment that will follow.
Indeed, Mickey decides to start an "innocence project
" with the goal of getting wrongfully convicted criminals released from jail and then cashing in on the lawsuits to follow. He takes up the case of one Lucinda Sanz, arrested for murdering her ex-husband Roberto. Lucinda gave a "nolo contendere" plea but insists she was browbeaten into it. Mickey soon finds that Lucinda is indeed innocent, and there is a conspiracy at the heart of the murder of Roberto Sanz.
Mickey is assisted by his driver, second investigator, and half-brother Harry Bosch. Harry, who has been battling cancer, went to work for Mickey just for the health insurance. Harry begins an investigation of the Sanz case while also going through an experimental treatment that he hopes will send his cancer back into remission.
Tropes:
- Ask a Stupid Question...: Cisco has been following Madison Landon, Roberto Sanz's girlfriend. Bosch meets him and Cisco shows a photo."That's her?", Bosch asked.
"No, I just took this for laughs," Cisco said. - Broken Pedestal: Done subtly with Mickey's ex-wife, Maggie McPherson. Throughout the Mickey Haller series, Maggie the righteous prosecutor has always been able to push Mickey's buttons, particularly regarding the guilt Mickey sometimes feels about defending criminals. However, in this case it's Maggie who's on the side of wrong, trying to keep Lucinda Sanz in jail. Worse, she does it in an extremely sleazy way, suggesting while Harry Bosch is on the stand that Harry may be sliding into dementia. At the end, when she tries needling Mickey about the lawsuit he'll probably be filing on behalf of Lucinda Sanz, Mickey isn't bothered.Mickey: I let it go. Maggie didn't have the same hold over me she'd once had. I had reached the point where her disappointments in me no longer mattered.
- Circling Vultures: Lampshaded, and not in the usual desert setting. Bosch finds it symbolic when he watches vultures circling around City Hall.
- Clear My Name: Mickey takes on the case of Lucinda Sanz, in prison for a murder she didn't commit.
- Mickey and Harry look into another case, a man named Edward Coldwell convicted of hiring a hit man to kill his wife, but they drop it when Harry's initial investigation confirms that Coldwell actually did it.
- Continuity Nod:
- Jorge Ochoa is freed at the beginning of this novel as a result of the investigation that Harry and his unofficial partner, LAPD detective Renee Ballard, performed in the previous Connelly novel, Desert Star.
- More references to Harry's exposure to radioactive materials, which was the plot of The Overlook. Harry thinks this may have caused his cancer, although he admits that being a chain smoker for years may have also been a factor.
- Mickey stops by the memorial to David "Legal" Siegel, his father's old law partner and a mentor to Mickey, and a recurring character in the books. Legal died in 2022 at the age of 90. A melancholy Mickey remembers the last time he snuck Legal's favorite deli sandwich into the nursing home, only to find out that Legal was too deep into dementia to even eat it.
- Haller and Bosch come to Haller's home and realize that someone has broken in. Bosch says he doesn't have a gun, and Haller says that's good because he doesn't want "another shooting" in his home. He then remembers "More than fifteen years earlier" when he exchanged gunfire in his home with someone intent on killing him—that's Mickey Haller #1, The Lincoln Lawyer.
- Haller once again calls in Shamiram Arslanian, the forensic expert and also hot babe who has testified for him in previous novels. Harry takes a fancy to Dr. Arslanian but doesn't have the nerve to ask her to dinner.
- Crusading Lawyer: What Mickey Haller, once a very cynical manipulator of the law, seems to have come by the end of the novel. He speaks of how freeing Jorge Ochoa and Lucinda Sanz from jail has awakened a "need for change" in him. He speaks of how he can't imagine chasing cases to pay for billboards and advertisements anymore. The last line of the novel has Mickey walking out of jail (he was held overnight for contempt of court) and beginning "my own resurrection walk."
- Deuteragonist: Harry Bosch. This book is billed as "a Lincoln Lawyer novel" but basically, Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch are co-protagonists and the POV bounces back and forth between them. A similiar structure was used in previous Mickey Haller novel The Reversal.
- Dies Wide Open: Sgt. Sanger, after she's shot four times on the sidewalk in broad daylight.Sanger was dead, her eyes open and staring blankly at the sky.
- Dirty Cop: Sgt. Stephanie Sanger, who was in deep with a police gang, and killed Roberto Sanz five years prior because Sanz had an attack of conscience and went to the FBI.
- Double Tap: Quadruple tap. The unknown assassin who kills Stephanie Sanger shoots her three times at point blank range, then, after she's on the ground, shoots her again in the head.
- Flipping the Bird: Morris, Haller's opponent in the habeas hearing, flips him the bird after Haller wins a big ruling allowing the DNA evidence from the gunshot residue swabs.
- He Knows Too Much: The presumed motive for Stephanie Sanger's murder, shot to stop her from telling what happend with the Sanz murder, after Mickey tied her to it with a DNA sample.
- In-Series Nickname: Lucinda Sanz tells Haller and Bosch, during their first meeting with her, that people call her "Cindi".
- Karma Houdini: The guy who murders Stephanie Sanger in broad daylight on an LA sidewalk gets away with it, disappearing into the crowd when 73-year-old Harry Bosch can't catch up with him.
- Kirk's Rock: Harry points out the "jagged formation" of Vazquez Rocks as they pass by on the highway. He's riding with Shami Arslanian and awkwardly trying to make conversation with the attractive doctor.
- Law Procedural: Ace defense attorney Mickey Haller, trying to get an innocent woman out of jail.
- Mythology Gag: In the big action scene at the end, Harry chases the killer up the Angels Flight funicular. This was the setting for an entire book, Angels Flight, in which a much younger Harry Bosch investigated a double murder.
- Sibling Team: Mickey Haller as the lawyer, and his older half-brother, ex-cop Harry Bosch, as the investigator.
- Switching P.O.V.: The book alternates between Mickey in first-person narration, and Harry in third-person.
- Tattooed Crook: Bosch goes to visit Angel Acosta, a hood with the Mexican mafia who was in a shootout that also involved Roberto Sanz. His "entire neck was covered in prison-ink tattoos" and he has a teardrop tattoo that signals that he has killed for La Eme.
- There Are No Coincidences: When interviewing Angel Acosta, who was injured in a shootout involving Roberto Sanz, Bosch finds out that Acosta had the same attorney that later defended Lucinda Sanz. The trope is subverted in that Bosch reflects that sometimes there are coincidences in cases, but this can't be one of them.
- Time Skip: A seven-month time skip takes the story from Harry's pre-trial investigating to the actual habeas hearing.
- Title Drop: "Resurrection walk" is Mickey's phrase for the moment when a client who has been wrongly convicted is sprung from jail.
- Unconventional Courtroom Tactics: Mickey Haller's trademark. In this one he deliberately throws a tantrum in court that winds up getting him jailed for contempt, because he needs to delay the proceedings long enough for Dr. Arslanian to get a crucial DNA test done.
