Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer Series in Order
Bestselling author Michael Connelly specializes in detective novels, but with The Lincoln Lawyer series, he dips his toes into the world of legal thrillers. In The Lincoln Lawyer books, Connelly introduces us to the enigmatic and cynical criminal defense attorney Michael Haller (but you can call him Mickey). He’s been nicknamed the Lincoln Lawyer due to his penchant for dealing out of the back of his Lincoln town car. These books exist in the same world as Connelly’s popular Harry Bosch series. Not only so, but Bosch happens to be Mickey’s half-brother and makes appearances in the Mickey Haller books (and vice versa).
This series first landed on my radar when I saw the film adaptation of the first book. The Lincoln Lawyer cast includes Hollywood heavyweights such as Matthew McConaughey as Mickey and Ryan Phillippe as Louis Roulet. Looking for where to go after The Lincoln Lawyer? Don’t worry, I got you. Check out Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer books in order.
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.
Mickey elects to defend himself and must strategize and build his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles, all the while looking over his shoulder–as an officer of the court he is an instant target.
Mickey knows he’s been framed. Now, with the help of his trusted team, he has to figure out who has plotted to destroy his life and why. Then he has to go before a judge and jury and prove his innocence.
Defense attorney Mickey Haller is back, taking the long shot cases, where the chances of winning are one in a million. After getting a wrongfully convicted man out of prison, he is inundated with pleas from incarcerated people claiming innocence. He enlists his half brother, retired LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, to weed through the letters, knowing most claims will be false.
Bosch pulls a needle from the haystack: a woman in prison for killing her husband, a sheriff’s deputy, but who still maintains her innocence. Bosch reviews the case and sees elements that don’t add up, and a sheriff’s department intent on bringing quick justice in the killing of one of its own.Now Haller has an uphill battle in court, a David fighting Goliaths to vindicate his client. The path for both lawyer and investigator is fraught with danger from those who don’t want the case reopened and will stop at nothing to keep the Haller-Bosch dream team from finding the truth. Packed with intrigue and courtroom drama, Resurrection Walk shows once again that Michael Connelly is “the most consistently superior living crime fiction author” (South Florida Sun Sentinel).
Representing the victim’s family, Mickey’s case explores the mostly unregulated and exploding AI business and the lack of training guardrails. Along the way he joins up with a journalist named Jack McEvoy, who wants to be a fly on the wall during the trial in order to write a book about it. But Mickey puts him to work going through the mountain of printed discovery materials in the case. McEvoy’s digging ultimate delivers the key witness, a whistleblower who has been too afraid to speak up. The case is fraught with danger because billions are at stake.
It is said that machines became smarter than humans on the day in 1997 that IBM’s Deep Blue defeated chess master Garry Kasparov with a gambit called “the knight’s sacrifice.” Haller will take a similar gambit in court to defeat the mega forces of the AI industry lined up against him and his clients.
Beth O’Brien is a library assistant and book blogger. Born and raised in Atlantic Canada, she lives in picturesque Nova Scotia with her cat Edith. You can often find her rocking double denim with her nose in a book and a craft beer in her hand.