Joe Hilley is a lawyer based in Fairhope, near Moblie. He has recently published his third Mike Connolly novel, titled Electric Beach.
Mike Connolly is an attorney in Mobile attorney. He is a decent man struggling to live a decent life while he recovers from past mistakes. Connolly is a recovering alcoholic who drank himself into a divorce. His character is full of the same faults we encounter every day, which makes Mike Connolly both like-able and believable.
Connolly is hired to defend Perry Braxton, whose wife has disappeared. Braxton is suspected of murdering her, but no body has yet been found. In sleuthing around with his roughneck buddy Hollis Toombs, Connolly finds evidence all right, but it all seems to further implicate his client, not exonerate him.
...
Connolly must fight his alcoholism on a daily basis, one day at a time, and there is a fine and to me convincing scene where he loses. “As he watched, the red and silver label seemed to glow. A man on the label turned his head toward him. Their eyes met. The man smiled. ... The sweet smell of gin wafted up his nose and drifted through his sinus cavities. Taste buds on his tongue came to attention."
The action of this novel moves around Mobile, Dauphin Island, Grand Bay, and even to Cape San Blas in Florida, and familiar settings are always fun. Connolly has the lovesick yearning of Oxford’s Inspector Morse and some of the Don Quixote, knight-in-shining-armor attitude of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee.