My Desert Lawyers

The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel

Description

This #1 bestselling legal thriller from Michael Connelly is a stunning display of novelistic mastery - as human, as gripping, and as whiplash-surprising as any novel yet from the writer Publishers Weekly has called "today's Dostoevsky of crime literature."

Mickey 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.

Best-selling author Michael Connelly, whose character-driven literary mysteries have earned him a wide following, breaks from the gate in the over-crowded field of legal thrillers and leaves every other contender from Grisham to Turow in the dust with this tightly plotted, brilliantly paced, impossible-to-put-down novel.

Criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller's father was a legendary lawyer whose clients included gangster Mickey Cohen (in a nice twist, Cohen's gun, given to Dad then bequeathed to his son, plays a key role in the plot). But Dad also passed on an important piece of advice that's especially relevant when Mickey takes the case of a wealthy Los Angeles realtor accused of attempted murder: "The scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you [screw] up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life."

Louis Roulet, Mickey's "franchise client" (so-called becaue he's able and willing to pay whatever his defense costs) seems to be the one his father warned him against, as well as being a few rungs higher on the socio-economic ladder than the drug dealers, homeboys, and motorcycle thugs who comprise Mickey's regular case load. But as the holes in Roulet's story tear Mickey's theory of the case to shreds, his thoughts turn more to Jesus Menendez, a former client convicted of a similar crime who's now languishing in San Quentin. Connelly tellingly delineates the code of legal ethics Mickey lives by: "It didn't matter...whether the defendant 'did it' or not. What mattered was the evidence against him--the proof--and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt." But by the time his client goes to trial, Mickey's feeling a few very reasonable doubts of his own.

While Mickey's courtroom pyrotechnics dazzle, his behind-the-scenes machinations and manipulations are even more incendiary in this taut, gripping novel, which showcases all of Connelly's literary gifts. There's not an excess sentence or padded paragraph in it--what there is, happily, is a character who, like Harry Bosch, deserves a franchise series of his own. --Jane Adams

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-13
Summary: "A totally great read!"

Michael Conelly is one of my favorite authors and Lincoln Lawyer is a joy to read.

Brilliant!

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-07-12
Summary: "JUICY MYSTERY"

Actually I'm saving this for my summer read and really looking forward to it. I believe there's a movie in preproduction as we speak. Like Connelly's work - gruesome and funny, interesting and fun.

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-06-22
Summary: "Summer reading fast food"

We all know this writer. So don't need to go on about him. Tell you why I got this. Back in England I love to keep my foot in the States by reading the New Yorker. There was an article about the IPad, and also Amazon's version of the same, and the writer was talking about what he loves to read on these screens (give me a real book any day... I love the feel of the paper!), and he mentioned this book as something he "breezed" through. I like books I can breeze through. And yes, you are immediately grabbed. It reminds me of those perpetually moving seats on a ride at Disneyland. You sort of go on a moving floor that takes you at the same speed as the moving seats, and them jump in and you're off, with nothing stopping you. That's how his books read. This one was really fun, since he talks a great deal about Hollywood and what is called in the States as "the Valley" (my daughter used to say she was a "Valley Girl!"). It has that, "oh no... what did I get myself into" kind of feel. Bad part, it's very predicable. You know who is going to get killed, who is going to get double-crossed, who the bad guys and gals are. Once he sets something up, you sort of wait for the "twist", and then... there it comes. Like ordering something strange at a sushi bar. It may surprise you when the wiggling tentacles of Tako comes to your table, but you don't scream or anything, since you were expecting it all along. But is that a bad thing? I mean, while you are waiting for the big finish, it's fun to read. You like the characters. Come on. Fast food can be great. Especially when eating it alone while driving down the road with your favorite CD blasting away.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-06-02
Summary: "Tight Writing Creates A Good Legal Thriller"

A defense attorney, Mickey Haller, is born into the business, as it were, as a son of a famous lawyer who finds himself defending a wealthy individual who will pay what it takes to be properly defended since he is innocent, or so he proclaims in a manner similar to Haller's other clients. And the wealth perhaps colors the perception by Haller.

And during preparing for the trial, Haller begins to see different things and begins to question things and what may be going on. The twists and turns begin fairly early on in the book, and it is no secret in general what is going to potentially happen. Who is innocent. Who is guilty. What are the choices to be made. All of it is fairly standard legal thriller book type scenarios. But this book is more. Though seemingly in the usual mold, Connelly is able to make the twists and turns take you along the way with enough things that you will probably not see coming... or at least not everytime.

The writing is well done and tight - there really is not many lines that are in here that are filler or do not keep moving the story along. It is no secret how good Connelly is, and here he takes it into the world of the legal thriller which he does just as well as he always does.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-18
Summary: "A review of the audiobook"

11 hours, 37 minutes
10 CDs
Read by Adam Grupper

Michael Connelly leaves Harry Bosch behind for a while to introduce a new character - defense attorney Mickey Haller. Haller plays all of the angles all of the time. He knows all of the ins and outs of the L.A. court system and knows all of the ways to create revenue for his practice - he needs every penny because he has two ex-wives and a child to support. Haller saves money by using his car, a roomy Lincoln, as his office. His driver is a client who is working off what he owes to Haller.

Haller is asked to defend a very rich Beverly Hills playboy in an attempted rape/murder case and soon Haller's world starts to become even more complicated. Ethical considerations, murder, love of family and the desire for justice for a man unfairly imprisoned all get tangled together.

The audiobook is wonderfully read by veteran narrator Adam Grupper. He does a fantastic job of giving each character a distinctive voice and the conversations flow as easily as if they were read by a team of actors.

The book is a solid legal thriller - I stayed interested until the end and looked forwards to hearing more during my morning and evening commutes.