THE NICKEL CHOIR

After sending a man to death row, a Los Angeles prosecutor has doubts about the evidence in Flores’ novel.

As the story opens in 2023, Linda Sanchez, a tenacious star attorney in the LA district attorney’s office, has just accomplished a feat that puts her in the elite “Nickel Choir”—a handful of attorneys who’ve sent five convicts to death row. The defendant in question, Nicolas Meza, had a history of petty crimes and domestic violence before he was accused and convicted of burning down his own home after a fight with his wife, killing her and their young son. However, Linda can’t sit back and savor her victory, because Jeremy Holder, a slick, smug, Texas-born attorney who specializes in death penalty defenses, is handling Meza’s appeal. As she reviews the case, she knows that she made no mistakes; she would ordinarily be proud of her hard work, but something about the case doesn’t feel right, and it sticks in her mind like “a pebble stuck in [her] shoe.” A key piece of evidence—a blue Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap that Meza always wore for good luck—wasn’t found until after investigators had gone through the scene several times. Why was it missed at first? Unwilling to let it go, Linda teams up with trusted investigator Raymond “Mon” Santos to quietly poke around, and they quickly discover that the situation is far more complicated than they suspected. Danger quickly escalates as Linda’s car is vandalized, her mother is threatened, and the state bar receives an anonymous complaint that could destroy the lawyer’s career.

Flores, a former trial attorney, professor of criminal justice, and judge who lives in Southern California, portrays the vibrant culture of East LA with humor and warmth, liberally sprinkling the text with Chicano slang and cultural references. Linda is shown to be a driven attorney, a recovering alcoholic, and a supportive daughter and sister who still imagines conversations with her late husband, who died in 2005. Santos, an ex-Marine, is said to be “trilingual”—fluent in “English, Legalese, and Chicano street slang.” The narrative is mostly focused on Linda, but it includes scenes from several other characters’ points of view, including some that address readers directly. These fill in details of Linda’s and the defendant’s backstories but are sometimes a bit odd: Linda’s late spouse, for instance, states, “Oh, by the way, I’m dead.” Other scenes, such as an anecdote from a lawyer whose client Linda prosecuted (“I know I’m not a part of this story, but hear me out”), interrupt the flow while adding little to the story. The prose is sometimes vivid, as when a rookie cop’s tattoo is described as “either a rattler or a fat, menacing worm,” and an old man’s toenails are said to be “trying to escape in ten different directions”; other passages, though, feel awkward, such as “Spike chugged the drink wryly.” The plot is full of surprises that keep the story moving, although some, such as a fortuitous natural disaster, may strain readers’ credibility.

An often entertaining but unevenly executed legal thriller.