Madman Walking

April 2, 2018
Robertson’s lackluster sequel to 2017’s Two Lost Boys fails to deliver on the promise of its predecessor. A personal tragedy prompted lawyer Janet Moodie to leave the California state defender’s office and settle in an isolated Sonoma County community, where she handles criminal appeals. Janet avoids the more emotionally charged capital cases as a rule, but having accepted one in the previous book out of boredom, she does so again at a colleague’s request. A decade or so earlier, Howard Henley was charged with hiring Steve Scanlon to kill Jared Lindahl in an act of revenge for Lindahl’s beating him up and stealing his drug stash. Scanlon confessed to the crime, but claimed that the Aryan Brotherhood ordered the hit, not Henley. Henley represented himself at trial and was convicted. Janet now agrees to help Henley with his appeal, though his belief that he was the victim of a vast government conspiracy doesn’t make her task easy. An overly familiar plot line is not compensated for by the underdeveloped lead. Readers will hope for a return to form next time.