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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Oct 2005, 416 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2006, 528 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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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
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