David Brunelle is a prosecutor in the D.A.’s office in Seattle. He is, we are given to understand, intelligent and experienced.

You wouldn’t guess that from his conduct in the novel, Corpus Delicti. Even to me, whose legal expertise is mostly gleaned from novels and TV shows, he seemed like kind of a moron.

David is hard-working – too hard-working. He recently broke up with his girlfriend, under circumstances that did him no credit. Now even his best friend, police detective Larry Chen, is keeping his distance. But that doesn’t stop Chen from calling David in when he interviews a witness with an unusual story to tell.

Linda is a prostitute and a drug addict. But she’s worried about her friend Amy, another prostitute. Amy disappeared, after her pimp had publicly threatened her. Linda thinks Amy is dead – but she says she won’t testify to anything.

After David goes to visit Amy’s parents and learns that she hasn’t been back in some time to visit her little girl, who lives with them, David makes up his mind. Amy is dead, and her murder must be prosecuted just like anyone else’s.

His problem is that he has almost no corpus delicti.

“Corpus delicti,” the author explains, is not what most people think. We think it means the body of a murder victim (which does happen to be missing here), and that’s how it’s popularly used. But legally the term means the whole “body” of the evidence – all the verifiable facts that make up the prosecution’s case. And David’s got diddly in that regard. But that doesn’t stop him from proceeding.

He will have to deal with a series of preliminary judges of varying degrees of intelligence and competence. A very smart and savvy defense attorney. And sketchy witnesses who have little to say, and don’t want to say that.

Reading Corpus Delicti was frustrating for me. Again and again, David took actions that seemed to me obviously boneheaded, and they generally were. He even got somebody killed. One can argue that this is all good character development – David is feeling guilty and isolated, and is working too hard. But he’s still doing dumb legal work and it’s hard to sympathize with that.

The moment a prosecutor says, “This guy is really evil, and I’m going to get him convicted, with or without evidence,” he’s crossing a vital line. Sure, this guy is a scumbag. But what if the next guy’s innocent; just somebody a prosecutor doesn’t like? Abuse of power is a seductive thing, and corrosive to society and the law.

Also, it’s unrealistic. District prosecutors have budgets; their superiors won’t let them waste money on quixotic fishing expeditions.

I will admit that David pulls a smart trick at the end. I appreciated that. But all in all, I wasn’t impressed with him as a legal hero.

Another gripe: Almost nobody is physically described in this book. It’s the second novel like that I’ve read recently. Is this the new thing? Some way to avoid accusations of racism in the age of Woke?

Also, cautions for language. The prose wasn’t bad in general, though.