Another page turner from Connolly. Interesting, well written, police procedural.

Michael Connelly has great difficulty in writing in the first person so his Lincoln Lawyer stories lack the fluidity and the finesse of the (normal third person) Bosch stories. Connelly could take lessons from other authors like Lee Child who can write in the first person with panache (e.g., The Affair). So by Connelly standards this is only a so so effort that makes it difficult for a reader to maintain a high degree of interest.

Another well written Lincoln Lawyer novel from Michael Connelly.

Just could not get into this story. At page 263 I finally said.....am I enjoying this ? The answer was no.......closed it and returned to library.

I found this to be a blockbuster of a legal thriller, really suspect Grisham wishes his novels were like this. Strictly a legal thriller, though, as I noticed some of the comments here were mixed, but I found it most fascinating.

The story was a little different from the other Lincoln Lawyer novels because the hammer that I expected to drop did not happen. Well, La Cosse is no Louis Roulet, and that's ok, too. The story does have a melancholy ending in a thoughtful kind of way.

Told from a defence lawyer's perspective, the story shows how lawyers have strategies, plans, and ways of acting to get the judges and juries on the defence's side. For me, it was like watching a Law and Order TV show with background scenes of investigators finding the evidence to nail the real culprit, visits to the jailhouse and courtroom, sidebars with the judge, and the involvement of unsavory characters. This story is not a page turner as the author reviews the plot first by the lawyer and his investigators/help telling the reader what probably happened and then retelling the plot by trying to get the witnesses on the stand to corroborate the lawyer's theory. Connelly himself calls his plot "convoluted" and where "the bad guys are the good guys and the good guys become the bad guys". Indeed that is the case, as the main characters seek seemingly obscure evidence and association in order to pin the murder onto someone else rather than their client. It was my first Connelly book so I am unfamiliar if he uses the same lawyer in all of his "Lincoln Lawyer Series", but Haller, the defence lawyer, doesn't come across as a memorable character - about someone whom I must read another novel.

Reading this book, I was immediately struck by the similarity between it and any of the books I've read by David Hosp, such as "Among Thieves". The main protagonist in both cases is a lawyer, working primarily on the gritty edges of the field, defending clients who vary from unsavory to apparently beyond hope, some of whom are unable to pay for his services. In the course of their duties, both men come up against ruthless and often powerful adversaries -- on both sides of the law. So there's a "formula" to this kind of fiction and for those who enjoy it, myself included, it can be light, diversionary reading. And Connelly has taken the trouble to learn a lot about criminal law and construct an interesting plot that moves along well.
Such books are, of necessity plot driven. But the element that sets the best of this genre apart from the mediocre is the author's ability to make his/her characters real, engaging and a bit complex. Connelly tries to do this with his protagonist Mick Haller by touching on Haller's failed marriage and his attempts to maintain a relationship with his daughter, along with his struggle with a load of guilt for past failings. But in the end, Connelly doesn't come close to what David Hosp accomplishes in his series of books about Scott Finn. Most disappointing of all is the way Connelly treats Haller's relationship with the former prostitute Kendall Roberts, which has no credibility at all. Both writers surround their main protagonist with a small team of more or less stock characters (the partner with "muscle", the girl Friday etc.) but Hosp does a far better job of it, constructing characters who have a real life and become people we learn to care about.
Connelly has written and published a great number of books. Good for him, but I think I'll spend my time with David Hosp.

Another well written Lincoln Lawyer novel.

"The Gods of Guilt" is the most recent title in Michael Connelly's Lincoln Lawyer series. Per usual, protagonist Mickey Haller takes a licking and comes up still ticking.