Garrett Goodlove is a lawyer who lives and runs a small office in a fictional city in Humboldt County California (home of a lot of redwoods and marijuana agriculture).   He and Jen his lawyer-wife, Nicole his lawyer-daughter, and Carly his brilliant but deaf twin sister, run the office along with their older and eccentric investigator, Luella Davis and a secretary.  They’ve dealt with various cases over the course of 3 prior books and I’ve been delighted with every one. The books are smart and funny and not heavy-handed in any way, but they have good mysteries and great characters  Imo, they should be read in order as there’s an entertaining over-arching plot line which develops as they go.  

Forgotten Evidence
By Al Macy 2020
Read by Nick Sullivan – 6h 54m
Rating: A+ / legal crime
(#4 Goodlove and Strech series)

This time Arthur Toll, an older scientist at a local lab working on a special formula, goes missing. But before he does he leaves an envelope in the care of Garrett Goodlove with instructions telling him it should NOT be opened unless something happens to him. Goodlove puts it away but a few days later the man goes missing.

Toll is found but it appears he has profound amnesia and remembers nothing about his life except the intellectual material.  In the meantime, his rather sexy co-worker has been found dead and Toll is the prime suspect.    

It’s a good book!   The thing I like about a good series is that it gives the author time and space to develop both the plots and the characters. Good mysteries whether they’re legal crime or not need creative plots – actually, this is the basic thing in a good mystery novel. And so quality character development often gets lost, think Agatha Christie mysteries or even Elmore Leonard.  But with a series where the lead detective and his close people are the same characters over the course of several books then they can come unto their own and you get hooked into them – the reader wants to know what happens in their lives.  

I really enjoy the Goodlove and Shek series for the setting, the excellent puzzlers, the legal play and courtroom action as well as more of the company of Garrett Goodlove and his crew.