Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer team up to exonerate a woman who’s already served five years for killing her ex-husband.

Overall, a very self-aware novel with vivid characters and an interesting take on true crime as a genre - I would highly recommend getting this on your 'to be read' list for next year!Alice Slater absolutely NAILS the pacing in this. Not so fast that you lose out on the detail & feeling of suspense, but gripping enough that I binge-read the whole thing in a couple of days. Also, though it is nice that the detective in question finds external collaborators...well, there are some chapters where the protagonist does nothing or almost nothing and it is the others who carry out the real detective work. We're seeing this plot told through Laura and Roach's narratives, two very different characters who go through quite the journey together. Laura initially seems to have it all together with her matching beret and shoes, her organised book collection and her cheery attitude. Whereas Roach is bitter and judgy, she exudes an air of arrogance like she's better than everyone else purely because she is not like them - except really she's exactly like them, she just can't see it. The two characters start off contrasting each other perfectly, and gradually their relationship becomes more knotted and complicated. A persistent Middlesex police officer plunges into the surprisingly cutthroat world of bookselling in this savory reprint first published in 1956. And the unease with which they circle one another coupled with their conflicting opinions on True Crime really injected a sinister layer of tension that had me on edge wondering what would happen next.

The first half of the book flowed well, but it wasn't totally engaging for me, I didn't feel the unbridled desire to resume reading every time I had to interrupt. This is such a fantastic book, dripping with malice and tension. It is a dark journey into obsession. The pop culture references and dark humour throughout make this an engrossing and enjoyable read. The story will get under your skin and make you itch. Told in alternating POV between the two characters in short snappy chapters. They both work in a neglected dilapidated bookshop.

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I appreciated the incisive introduction by Martin Edwards. He places the book in its time and explains its place in the genre of classic crime.