Los Angeles, 1956. An ambitious prosecutor's investigation into the suspicious death of a wealthy businessman uncovers the murder of a young prostitute twenty years earlier. His suspects in both crimes: the mother of the girl he loves and his father, the Chief of the LAPD.

And I think it's always a good thing when the protagonist starts breaking rules, trespassing in other peoples' domain. And he must: the plot is a conspiracy against the protagonist. The rules, the "No trespassing" signs are designed to maintain the status quo, to stop him from achieving his objective goal.

This draft of the logline seems to outline a situation in which the MC makes a discovery then the logline makes a statement about the MCs opinion of the discovery.

It doesn't outline what the main action will be that the MC will take.

Will the MC go after the mother of the girl he loves how soon after the discovery of the murder? Will the MC go after his father and how soon after the discovery? Will he search for other suspects because he refuses to accept his current suspicions?

From the way the logline reads now, the inciting incident is the discovery of the murder not the murder itself. As such his main action would be to investigate who killed her but if he already has suspects at the beginning then the "who dun it" element is diluted. Better to shroud the killer in mystery and let the reader wonder who could have killed.

Part of the fun is watching Poirot figure out the mystery than know the solution ourselves...

According to the currant draft of the logline "...the suspicious death of a wealthy businessman ..." is not relevant to the prostitute's death and his subsequent suspicions. Best to remove this from the logline and save on word count.

The location and period are also un related to the story in the logline so better not to mention them all together.

Hope this helps.

I just wrote a reply to this, but I'm not sure it posted, so I'll try it again.

Thanks for the crit, dpg. It's funny you should bring up the roles of prosecutor vis a vie the police. I have an exchange of dialogue about that in the script. The prosecutor does indeed investigate on his own, but that's obviously not being revealed in the logline. The points in your last paragraph are extremely helpful and they'll be helping to shape the next version of my logline.