The Madstone by Elizabeth Crook

The Madstone by Elizabeth Crook, coming out November 7, brings back Benjamin Shreve, the narrator of Crook’s 2018 title, The Which Way Tree. This time, he is writing a book-length letter to Small Tot, a 4-year-old boy, to be read when Tot reaches 19, the age Benjamin is when he puts this story down on paper in November of 1868.

In this work of historical fiction, Benjamin, a carpenter by trade in Comfort, Texas, encounters a pregnant woman named Nell Banes and her son Henry, called Tot, when a  stagecoach stops in his town. The pair are running away from Texas to avoid revenge-seeking outlaws who are hot on their trail. Benjamin selflessly does everything he can to help Nell and Tot, at the same time, falling in love with them both.

Turns out Nell reported to the Freedmen’s Bureau the whereabouts of the gang of the Swamp Fox of the Sulfur, a group that has been harassing and committing acts of violence toward black people. Now she and Tot are on the run toward Indianola to board a ship to New Orleans to live with a cousin.

The route to safety is wrought with obstacles including Tot being bitten by a rabid coyote who he thought was a dog. It is said the madstone, a special medicinal substance that when soaked in milk will cure rabies, so Benjamin must head out to the nearest towns to try to find one. This hitch in the plans brings the outlaws that much closer and the escape that much out of reach.

Elizabeth Crook is an American novelist who specializes in historical fiction, in particular the Western. She has  written seven novels, including The Night Journal, which received The Spur Award from Western Writers of America. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her family.

 Mickey Haller is known for taking and winning nearly impossible cases, and this she said/he’s dead case that has Lucinda Sanz locked up now for five years is no exception. Even better, Haller’s half-brother Harry Bosch is working as an investigator for him, looking for possible cases of innocence similar to The Innocence Project in this 7^th book in the Lincoln Lawyer series, Resurrection Walk, due out November 7.

The book starts with such a walk, which is when the shackles come off and the last metal door standing between the prisoner and freedom opens like “the gates of heaven.” Haller has been able to get a ruling of “actual innocence” in court for a young man who was 14 years into a life sentence.

When Haller’s mail blows up with other inmates seeking to prove their own innocence, he has Bosch work through the letters, evaluating each one as possible wrong convictions. Bosch has narrowed it down to two, and after a little investigation in which things just don’t add up, he suggests Haller make a jailhouse call on Lucinda, who has maintained her innocence all along in the five years she’s been locked up.

However, some people do not want the case reopened. Lucinda’s ex-husband was a deputy sheriff, and his colleagues say that justice was done in arresting Lucinda for his death. Lucinda’s first lawyer does not want to be accused of poor representation. Turns out Lucinda was cornered by her lawyer into pleading nolo, or no contest, to manslaughter instead of pleading guilty or not guilty because if her case went to trial, she faced life in prison.

As Bosch digs into the case and Haller starts to plot his defense for Lucinda, they find a number of problems with the so-called evidence and see a resurrection for their client if they can disprove the gun residue test and investigate the trajectory of the bullets that killed Deputy Sanz.

After Michael Connelly spent three years covering crime in Los Angeles, he started writing crime fiction. Fifteen books into his career, he came up with a new character The Lincoln Lawyer in 2005 in a book with the same name. The book was adapted as a 2011 film of the same name, starring Matthew McConaughey, and is currently a Netflix series in its second season.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting October 6, 2023.

I would like to thank the Hatchette Book Group, Little, Brown and Company, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.