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BookBrowse Reviews The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

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The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

The Lincoln Lawyer

by Michael Connelly
  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • Readers' Rating (3):
  • First Published:
  • Oct 3, 2005, 416 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jun 2006, 528 pages
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About This Book

Reviews

BookBrowse:


Connelly enters the crowded legal thriller field with flash and panache.

From the book jacket: Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers - they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence - it's about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it's even about justice.

A Beverly Hills playboy arrested for attacking a woman he picked up in a bar chooses Haller to defend him, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years. It is a defense attorney's dream, what they call a franchise case. And as the evidence stacks up, Haller comes to believe this may be the easiest case of his career.  Then someone close to him is murdered and Haller discovers that his search for innocence has brought him face-to-face with evil as pure as a flame. To escape without being burned, he must deploy every tactic, feint, and instinct in his arsenal - this time to save his own life.

Comment:
Mickey Haller may represent lowlifes but, despite his clientele and his own facade of world-weariness, he maintains something of a conscience, triggered in part by a past case that he mishandled which landed a (probably) innocent man on Death Row.  However, when he takes on the case of Louis Roulet, who is accused of beating a prostitute, the guilt or innocence of the man is secondary to the dollar signs that Haller sees in his future, because Roulet appears to be the ultimate prize for a lawyer - a 'franchise' client - i.e. one who will provide repeat business over the years; and as an added bonus there's a fighting chance that he's even telling the truth when he proclaims himself innocent!

Connelly spends about half the book introducing Haller's complex world, replete with a motley collection of ex-clients proficient in interesting and usually illegal areas of expertise, and a couple of ex-wives; and then launches him on a roller coaster ride complete with more than ample twists and turns.

With starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist this is a must for legal thriller aficionados and for fans of Michael Connelly.

Interesting note for fans of Connelly's Harry Bosch series: Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch are half-brothers, sharing the same father, J. Michael Haller - which begs the question whether we'll see Haller and Bosch together in a future book?

This review first ran in the November 9, 2005 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

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