The Reversal: Review

I finished reading The Reversal, by Michael Connelly. This book was actually a bit difficult to get into. That might be misleading, so I should clarify that I didn't put the book down or stagnate in my progress through the book at any given point of time, but that was because the book was rather straightforward and easy to plow through.

Summary (No Spoilers)

The Reversal is a legal thriller by the bestselling and prolific writer, Michael Connelly. He is known for his detective stories starring Harry Bosch, as well as his Lincoln Lawyer novels, starring Mickey Haller. The Reversal is Connelly's third Lincoln Lawyer novel. The book details Haller's crossing of the line in the legal room. A seasoned defense lawyer who has never dared to work for the prosecution, Haller is asked by the District Attorney to take up a case that is fraught with political controversy. Haller agrees and is sucked into a seemingly lost cause.

Strides (Spoilers)

Before I get into the criticisms, which I think are numerous, I want to go over some of the things that I liked.

I liked how the book ended, at least in one of the respects that it did. At the very end, there are still a whole lot of loose ends open about the killer in question. A new theory is proposed, suggesting that all of his queer behavior was just misdirection to throw the investigators off and send them down false trails, but the last page is of one of the characters, Harry Bosch, running to check up on a piece of evidence in the hopes that they would find something on the man. We don't find out, at least in this book, what the results are. And that is the point. Uncertainty. I don't imagine everyone would like this loose-ends approach to story-telling, but I found that I really appreciated it, especially alongside everything else in this story.

Another thing that I liked was the courtroom strategy employed by the characters. My favorite stories are always the one's with scheming and strategy in some form or another, so watching the characters work out a strategy and trap their opponent is always fun.

But these benefits are rather small and are undercut by the rest of the story.

Stumbles (Spoilers)

Characters (Spoilers)

Now, let me start by saying that this is the first Michael Connelly book that I have read, so I don't know how this book stands up against the rest of his catalogue. That said, I am familiar with courtroom thrillers by John Grisham, so I will use those as a kind of benchmark.

The first thing I want to talk about are the characters. There are two alternating perspectives in the story: Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch. That said, beyond superficial differences, I don't think any such distinction exists. The characters exist to function within a plot—they need a lawyer and a detective—and so the characters fulfill their respective roles and do nothing more beyond that. There are seeds of an interesting character just barely hinted at, but they never really delve into the issues, so I am left feeling nothing. And the plot, of course, doesn't really bring out any deep character conflicts. For Mickey, I think some of the character conflict was just shoehorned in.

There is one point in the story where Mickey finds out that he missed an important event for his daughter, something that he really wanted to go to. Yet, this issue is only broached at the beginning of a chapter and is never talked about again. We don't see Mickey plan ahead and then get distracted; we see Mickey get reminded after the fact and this is both the first and last we hear of it. We don't even get to see the consequences; we never see the daughter’s reaction or learn what she thinks, other than an implication that she would be hurt, which is the simple answer. He might as well have not had a daughter, for all she served for his character or the plot of the story.

This irrelevancy is only made more frustrating by the fact that Connelly seems to imply that Haller's daughter is important to his decision making. In the very beginning of the novel, Haller agrees to become a temporary prosecutor, yet I don't exactly know why. Haller thinks about his daughter seeing him on the prosecution side of the aisle just before he agrees, but there is nothing else there to go off of. I suppose I could infer that his daughter might appreciate the prosecution's role more, but I think it would be better if Connelly was just clearer and more poignant with Haller's motivation. His daughter doesn't even show up to watch his case, so . . . why?

I mentioned before that there are seeds of an interesting character. This is tied to the lack of internal monologue that outlines the deeper motivation of the characters. Connelly slashes these sections down to their bare minimum, ironically only communicating thoughts that are evident in the dialogue, anyway, which I will touch upon later. I understand why Connelly is motivated to do this. He is writing a thriller and he wants to keep the plot moving, but I think this is one of the biggest faults of the thriller genre; there has to be some balance and I think a thriller can survive with a little more introspection.

I can compare the book to the Grisham books that I have read. In The Runaway Jury there is a character who is a recovering alcoholic. But Grisham does not just tell us this in the space of a few sentences scattered throughout the text. This man's looming alcoholism is a pestilence that consumes his thoughts at every moment, especially moments of high stress. And this stuck with me. I remember this character precisely because of this vice and this struggle that he had. You have a similar example for The Firm. In the book, the main character has serious trouble with infidelity. This isn't just told, but something that oozes off of the page in everything the character does. When he walks into the room, what he looks at, and how he interacts with others, all show his personality and his susceptibility. Note that these characteristics are nothing new. And they aren't exactly interesting in the abstract, but even in that case, they are still significantly better than Connelly's characters. Connelly's characters don't feel real.

Story Conflict (Spoilers)

The characters tie into the next the issue with this novel. Another issue is the primary conflict in the story. Jessup, the man who is on trial, is fine as a character. His character is muddled with ambiguity, which ties into the open-ended finish of the novel. My real issue is with the criminal defense attorney opposite of Haller. He never comes off as a threat. He is characterized as clever in the story. Indeed, his ham-fisted moniker is "Clever Clive." Yet, I don't see it. The man is completely steamrolled in the case. Not once was I under the illusion that he might be able to win. Numerous times throughout the book, I was waiting for the biggest disaster to hit our hero, where Clever Clive sinks his teeth in and nearly wins, but that never happens. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Clever Clive is utterly incompetent. He comes off as petty and simple-minded. Whatever strategy he pulls, falls out from under him, all culminating in a humiliating defeat at the end that made me laugh. I suppose that might be the point, yet I think it would have worked better I had been convinced he was a threat beforehand.

The cleverest thing Clive must have done was misdirect Haller and Bosch with red herrings, but this doesn't really make up for anything. He might have strategized that; the book is ambiguous about whether Jessup's odd behavior was staged or not. And even if it was a red herring, the herring was meant to distract from a fatal flaw in his case, which it failed to do, anyway.

Part of the problem with this character is with Connelly, himself. There is one point in the story where Clive steamrolls a rape victim on stand with lies; he pummels her with questions, interrupting her answers and generally demonstrates himself to be a piece of shit. Apparently, however, this was a strategy (who would have thought!). And the strategy was to introduce his own theory into the case. That's it. As if dogging the girl was relevant to accomplishing this. And the theory was implausible trash, to begin with, not even something I would imagine would be enough to plant the seeds of doubt necessary to make his case. My overall point was that this action was presented as a clever, yet cynical move. It wasn't. The book had established sympathy for the rape victim, particularly in the eyes of the Jury, so it was amazing that Connelly thought this would realistically accomplish anything.

The Prose (Spoilers)

The prose was awful. And so, the novel, throughout, was frustrating to read. The benefit, potentially, is that I can plow through the book without worrying about information retention. But that is no excuse.

What the prose offers here is utterly simplistic descriptions, infuriating redundancy, and an all-around baffling manner of communicating a story. This story made me realize how low the bar of quality was for published authors and even bestsellers. I'm being too harsh, yet this was the exact thought going through my mind as I read.

I actually have two examples that I want to go through. They perfectly capture every aspect of what I am trying to communicate:

'Mr. Haller, for what it's worth, I thought you acquitted yourself quite well as a prosecutor. I am sorry it ended this way but you are welcome back to this court anytime and on either side of the aisle.'

'Thank you, Judge. I appreciate that. I had a lot of help.'

'Then I commend your whole team as well.'

With that, the judge stood and left the bench. I sat there for a long time, listening to the gallery clear out behind me and thinking about what Breitman had said at the end. I wondered how and why such a good job in court had resulted in such a horrible thing happening in Clive Royce's office.

and

'Is Maggie McFrierce coming?' Bosch asked.

I put the paper down on the table.

'No, Williams sent her back to Van Nuys. Her part in this case is over.'

'Why isn't Williams moving her downtown?'

'The deal was that we had to get a conviction for her to get downtown. We didn't.'

I gestured to the newspaper.

'And we weren't going to get one. This one holdout juror is telling anybody who will listen that he would've voted not guilty. So I guess you can say Gabriel Williams is a man who keeps his word. Maggie's going nowhere fast.'

That's how it worked in the nexus of politics and jurisprudence. And that's why I couldn't wait to go back to defending the damned.

We sat in silence for a while after that and I thought about my ex-wife [Maggie is his ex] and how my efforts to help her and promote her had failed to miserably. I wondered if she would begrudge me the effort. I surely hoped not. It would be hard for me to live in a world where Maggie McFierce despised me.

The whole story is written like this. Note how the character has a conversation about a given topic, and then, literally one paragraph later we're being told that this conversation is on his mind. Yeah. I know. I. Just. Read. It. This redundancy permeates the prose of this entire book. These are just two quotes I snapshotted as I was finishing the book.

The examples also demonstrate how bafflingly incompetent the communication of internal states is. Instead of laying out the exact thoughts on the character's mind, instead of describing any illuminating actions that might communicate what is on his mind, he simply states "X is on his mind." Yeah, thanks for that treat.

Conclusion

This review is much, much longer than I imagined it would be. And I like the book a whole lot less now that I have finished this post. I was mixed before, but now . . . I think will give the book a 2/10.