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In addition to three works of nonfiction, I also listened to two novels this month.
Strangers in Time by David Baldacci
- Hachette Audio, 2025
- Narrated by Stewart Crank, Alexandra Boulton, John Lee, Nicola F. Delgado, Matthew Lloyd Davies, Joe Pitts, and David Baldacci
We learn about humanity from stories of individual lives. In A Calamity of Souls David Baldacci introduced us to two people fighting for civil rights during the Jim Crow era in the American South. The historical novel Strangers in Time focuses on three individuals in London in 1944:
- Charlie Matters, age 14
- Molly Wakefield, age 15
- Ignatius Oliver, adult owner of a book shop, The Book Keep
Charlie lives with his grandmother in an apartment in a partially bombed building near the docks. He’s learned how to hitch rides and search for anything edible, useful, or otherwise salvageable left behind after the bombings. His Gran has a part-time job at a bakery and struggles to feed the two of them. Charlie doesn’t dare tell her that he stopped going to school a while ago and now spends his days looking for ways to earn a little extra money. He’d especially like to find a pair of shoes that aren’t too small for him.
Molly Wakefield was sent away from London five years ago through a program that sent children to live in safer areas outside the city. She knows that her mother has been sent to an institution, also outside the city, but when she returns to her fine London home she expects to find her father, who works for the Ministry of Food. Instead, she finds only her nanny, Mrs. Pride, who keeps making excuses for her father’s absence.
Ignatius Oliver is a middle-aged man who faithfully tends his dead wife’s book shop. He is occasionally visited by a strange man with whom he exchanges documents. But mostly he’s visited by memories and regrets over his life with his wife.
Baldacci structures the early parts of the book as a spy novel, creating a sense of foreboding that underscores the fear of treachery and betrayal during war time. Charlie knows his way all around the city in his search for something he can sell or trade. Molly suspects someone is following her and wonders why no one at the Ministry of Food can tell her where her father is. Ignatius, whose book shop houses a strange machine, worries about the nosey tea shop owner across the street.
It’s not too long before the paths of these three characters cross and they begin to work together to survive in a threatening world. One of the the stars of this novel is the sense of found family it portrays as the older man and the two adolescents learn to care for and help each other in their world filled with death and destruction.
The other star of this novel is its portrayal of what everyday life was like for ordinary people in London during the German attacks: severe food rationing, air raid alerts and trips to the shelters, death and destruction from the bombs, children orphaned, homes destroyed. In this vein Baldacci presents not only atrocities inflicted by the Germans, the identifiable enemy, the “other,” but also those perpetrated by people upon their neighbors and countrymen because circumstances have presented opportunities. In a world of such chaos, the bonds between two teenagers and one lonely man offer the possibility of hope for a better life in a better world.
Study Notes
David Baldacci, master of fictional worlds, wants to fix the real one
© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown
The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly
- Little, Brown & Company, 2025
- Narrated by Peter Giles
I haven’t reviewed all of Michael Connelly’s books over the years because they feature recurring characters and because the books are invariably well done. But I’ve read them all and have kept up with the characters—Harry Bosch, Mickey Haller, Jack McEvoy, Renee Ballard.
The Proving Ground, the eighth book in the Lincoln Lawyer series, has arrived 20 years after Mickey Haller arrived on the literary scene. Haller originally appeared as a defense lawyer who worked for some very bad people who had done some very bad things; Haller also made a lot of money defending those people who had themselves made a lot of money from the bad things they’d done.
One of Haller’s ex-wives is Maggie MacPherson, a prosecutor who has earned the nickname Maggie MacFierce because of the ferocity with which she goes after criminals. Mickey and Maggie have always been at odds over his defense of criminals, and Mickey has been wrestling with his conscience over the last several books in the series. In Proving Ground, Maggie has recently been elected district attorney of Los Angeles.
And also in this novel, Mickey has left criminal law for civil court not only to assuage his own conscience, but also to try to win back Maggie, the love of his life. After Maggie’s house is destroyed by the L.A. wildfires, she moves in with Mickey while deciding how to move forward. This quasi-reunion reinforces Mickey’s desire to live a life in which Maggie might consider taking him back.
In true Lincoln Lawyer fashion, the civil case Mickey is pursuing is a blockbuster. He’s representing the mother of a young girl who was gunned down in the school parking lot by an ex-boyfriend whose AI chatbot told him it was OK to kill someone who had hurt him. The defendant in the case is the company that developed the chatbot. The outcome of the case will have massive implications for public safety and the future of technology.
The novel acutely examines issues critical to the role of technology in today’s murky legal system as it struggles to catch up with new developments. But equally as interesting is watching Mickey Haller examine and re-examine his life choices as he struggles to make himself a man whom Maggie MacPherson might fall back in love with.
Study Notes
20 Years Strong: How Michael Connelly Keeps “The Lincoln Lawyer” Series Fresh
© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown
