Z/Web

Fun parody-type film, but seriously done with plenty of unpredictable humor. For instance, you’d expect the main cop to be a violence-prone idiot, but it’s the opposite: he’s a super-cop, so good that his outstanding arrest record is making the rest of the force (sorry, service) look bad, so he’s shipped out to an isolated village as a “promotion.” There he uncovers a huge conspiracy and the film concludes with plenty of mindless violence and hilarious action. The plot’s purposely overly elaborate and convoluted since this is a parody and at times that slows things down a bit, but it’s still plenty of fun. My favorite bit of humor: when the cop goes to see his girlfriend, a crime tech, she and her fellow techs are dressed in identical coveralls and dust masks, and he starts confessing his feelings to her only for her to say she isn’t his girlfriend and point to a different identical-looking tech across the room!

Author: Michael Connelly

I can’t say I’m crazy about this style of writing: the pace is glacial, almost Dragnet style, with almost every donut eaten and cup of coffee drunk described in depressing detail. Of course it turns out this level of detail is somewhat important, since this is a crime drama, and those details come into play later, but the book takes forever to get going and then keeps on going long after things are resolved. Worse, though the plot is a conspiracy that is significant enough to justify a lot of this time, it doesn’t quite make up for it. Next time I’ll stick to the condensed version.

Nicely done. This is a twisty thriller about a seemingly clear-cut crime: a wealthy man shoots his affair-having wife in the head and admits to it when the police arrive. The prosecutor assigned to the case has just accepted a position at a prestigious law firm and isn’t focused on the case with a mountain of evidence including a signed confession. But in court things go awry: the gun found on the man had never been fired, the arresting officer was having an affair with the victim, and that man was present during the man’s confession. Suddenly the case is in jeopardy and the fiasco might be enough to derail the prosecutor’s new job. The resolution is a bit predictable — I figured it out in the first half — but it’s still a fun ride and the performances are excellent, especially the incomparable Anthony Hopkins as the murderer.