Gus Lee's brilliant No Physical Evidence

I've just finished "No Physical Evidence" by Gus Lee and I liked it very much. It's the second time I've read it and I'm guessing I liked it the first time too; one of the blessings of a failing middle-aged memory is it gives you (at least) twice as many books to read.
The raison d'etre of this blog is to write about genre fiction with Christian content, and not about the genre of Christian fiction. So how does it measure up?
I can't honestly tell from this one novel whether Lee is a Christian, but it's my blogsite so I am claiming there's enough Christian content for it to be in here. The hero is certainly angry enough at God to have stopped believing in Him by the beginning of the story, but the question of his belief remains unanswered throughout, and many of the significant characters in the book are believers: his Chinese mother; his American wife; and the teenage rape victim whose case he prosecutes. There is no preaching, no discussions of religion, but no cheap shots at religions either. There are plenty of good people whose faith position is unspecified, but, as I said, some good people whose faith is explicit and not incidental to their goodness. It is one of those stories, pretty common in legal fiction for some reason, where the protagonist starts the story in a state of emotional and/or moral collapse, and in the course of pursuing an important case, also deals with his demons.
I like these novels best, where the hero makes some progress internally. Consider in contrast the novels of James Swain, discussed in a previous blog: Swain's heroes go throuch external tribulations but remain somewhat two dimensional and static.
Another element I enjoy that is key to Lee's book is that of politics: both the internal politics of the district attorney's office, and the external politics of an approaching election that affects the district attorney and several judges involved in the rape case.
While the eventual resolution of the rape case seems to depend on quite a bit of luck at the end(as if Lee was rushed for time or space and had to wrap his final plot reversals too quickly), what seems implausible in terms of real life works well dramatically. That is, the acceleration of pace and twist in the final pages, is an excellent way to end a book that is part legal procedural and part thriller.
Which brings up another thing I like about this book: the pacing is sometimes fast, sometimes slow. There were times I could put it down, knowing I had good reading ahead, and times when I couldn't let go.
For those who like courtroom drama (me), there is plenty, with the odds stacked heavily against the protagonist.
And finally, back to the deeper themes: there is realistic depiction of the impact of beloved child's death on a family and on individual parents, and a satisfying treatment of such impacts as grief, despair, the sin of sloth or acedia and of recovery from these wounds and wrongful attitudes. A moral tale with a realistically conflicted protagonist. I'm looking for more books by Lee now.