The Law of Innocence

Starred review from October 5, 2020
L.A. defense attorney Mickey Haller takes on the hardest case of his career in bestseller Connelly’s superlative seventh Lincoln Lawyer novel (following 2015’s The Crossing). After the body of a career con artist is found in the trunk of Haller’s Lincoln Towncar, he faces a first-degree murder rap. Opting to defend himself, Haller enlists his own legal defense team to assist. Half-brother Harry Bosch steps in to help investigate, and the unusual case leads to the port of Los Angeles and a biofuel company run by a recidivist criminal with mob ties whom Haller put away years earlier. Bosch suspects that the company is running a complex scam and double dipping on government subsidies payouts. Meanwhile, 2020 is off to a strange start with reports of a deadly virus in China that threatens to spread worldwide. The tension builds as Haller prepares for trial, and it becomes clear that he was framed by a much larger entity than he originally thought. This is a supremely intelligent, well-paced courtroom thriller by a modern master. Agent: Philip Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary.

Starred review from October 15, 2020
Connelly's first Mickey Haller novel since The Gods of Guilt (2013) finds the brash defense attorney arrested for murder and forced to mount a defense from inside his jail cell. Haller landed in this world-class pickle after he was stopped by a possibly crooked cop, and a body was found in the trunk of his car. A frame, obviously, but who's behind it and why? Haller assembles his team, including his half-brother Harry Bosch, and attempts to formulate a counterattack. The rub, however, is that a not-guilty verdict won't be enough to restore Haller's reputation in the legal world. "To prove true innocence," Haller explains, "the guilty man must be found and exposed to world." In his Haller novels, Connelly has always displayed great ability to write courtroom scenes, combining thrust-and-parry exchanges between defense and prosecution with a look at the personal motives driving all the players (including the judge). He does all that here, too, but the extended focus on the pretrial discovery process, with Bosch and investigator Cisco Wojciechowski doing the legwork while Haller sits in jail, gives the novel a double-barreled appeal. This is a fine legal thriller and a revealing character study, as we watch Haller lose a little bluster at the prospect of life behind bars; there's also the matter of a strange virus in Wuhan, China, just starting to make headlines as Haller's case goes to trial. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: If you're a handicapper who pays attention to past-performance charts, a new Connelly novel means bet the farm.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer who's mostly played second fiddle to his half brother, Harry Bosch, in recent years, gets a most unwelcome star turn when he's arrested for murder. The evidence is neck-deep that Haller's ex-client, chronic con man Sam Scales, was dumped into the trunk of the attorney's trademark car and then shot to death inside his garage as Haller slept above--or, as prosecutor Dana Berg, a true believer in Haller's guilt, maintains, watched it all from a lot closer. The noose fits so tightly around Haller's neck that it's got to be a frame-up, but why, and by whom? Identifying the most likely perp as Louis Opparizio, a Vegas mobster Haller made look guilty on the stand nine long years ago, doesn't clear things up. It just leads his law partner, Jennifer Aronson, and his investigator, Cisco Wojciechowski, to the FBI investigation of BioGreen Industries, a firm in which Opparizio owned a major stake, and up against FBI agents Rick Aiello and Dawn Ruth, who make it clear that they have no intention of complying with the subpoena issued by Violet Warfield, the meticulous and fair-minded judge trying the case. As Haller plots his own defense, sometimes from within a jail cell, sometimes when he's out on bail, he's haunted by the old adage about how any lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. Of course Connelly's not going to convict his franchise hero of murder; of course Opparizio and the FBI are mixed up in the case; of course there'll be loose ends left hanging. None of that matters. For sheer courtroom inventiveness and suspense, Haller has never shone brighter. A virtuoso performance even by Connelly's high standards.

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Starred review from November 1, 2020

When police find the body of a client in the trunk of defense attorney Mickey Haller's Lincoln, Mickey knows he's been framed. Now he's coordinating his defense from a jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in Los Angeles, all the while watching his back. With a 750,000-copy first printing.

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