I finally (sheesh) got around to reading The Brass Verdict this past weekend. I felt like his last book before that (The Overlook) was as good as anything he’d written, but Brass Verdict left me kind of … lukewarm. And one of his recent books (maybe The Closers, but maybe Chasing the Dime) read like an unused story from the TV show he was doing a while back.
Used to be, I looked forward to every new Connelly novel. But it took me over a year to get around to reading the one I just finished.
How do other fans feel about his work of late?
The last one I read was The Lincoln Lawyer. I thought it was shallow, unfinished almost, like reading a screenplay. I’m starting to prefer the other Connolly (John).
See, I don’t remember enjoying Lincoln Lawyer all that much either.
It’s sad, because I read so little that Connelly and Kurt Eichenwald are really about the only authors I can recommend to people, and I hate to think I’m losing one of them.
Well, you can start recommending the other Connolly. 
Or William Lashner – his writing is similar to Connelly’s.
I loved The Brass Verdict. I also liked The Lincoln Lawyer, but not quite as much as TBV.
Maybe you just don’t like his legals as well as you do his police procedurals? I hadn’t read any legals in a while so these really hit the spot for me. And I kind of geek out on how he ties his protagonists’ story lines together.
The ending was almost overdoing it, but I loved TBV right up to that point. It was just like a second helping of dessert I didn’t need.
I like him. Maybe it’s because I read so much dreck. I have The Scarecrow on wait list at the library. I liked *The Lincoln Lawyer *better than TBV, but they were both high quality.
That’s a completely valid hypothesis. I do have to grant that he achieved in The Brass Verdict the highest thing any mystery author can: I didn’t see the ending coming.
I actually thought the “fixer” attorney (the one with the judge husband) had something to do with it.
You know, that’s a good point. As I mentioned, I don’t read a tremendous amount (I bill myself as the Worst-Read Librarian of All Time), so maybe the problem is that I have sort of lost perspective.
I hear Nicholas Sparks has a new book coming out. Maybe I should give that a read.