It’s fairly normal to get book recommendations from TikTok these days, I suppose, but maybe not quite in the way that I did. Sensing some primal need in me for courtroom drama, my algorithm has been steadily feeding me clips from Netflix’s TV adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer for weeks. In every clip I’ve seen thus far, the protagonist gets his client off with some slick legal trick, exasperating judge and prosecutor alike. It’s not exactly reinventing the wheel, premise-wise, but the execution seemed especially solid, and I was intrigued. So when I saw that my library had the first book in the series available with no wait time (as opposed to Creation Lake, which should become available sometime next August) I decided to give it a shot.
Mickey Haller, Jr. is a defense attorney who lives for the hustle. Two divorces have left him living alone in a house he can barely afford, so he’s always on the hunt for the next client with deep pockets. Until that materializes, he spends his time chasing down payment from the various drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, and gang members that make up his daily bread-and-butter. Haller, the son of a legendary L.A. attorney he barely remembers, thinks it’s his lucky day when he gets called in to defend Louis Roulet, accused of a murder he swears he did not commit. Louis is the son of a prominent realtor, and has never run afoul of the law before, so even jaded Mickey finds it hard to believe that Louis would beat up a prostitute he picked up in a bar. Louis claims it was a set-up, and Haller, if he doesn’t outright believe it, knows that it’s a story he can sell.
That’s the thing with Haller. Whatever idealistic notions he entered his profession with have long since been sanded down if not eradicated entirely. Haller’s got a job to do, and if he doesn’t exactly whistle while he works, he still can’t stand it when the other components of the system, like cops and ADA, give him shit for doing the work he does.
The Roulet case turns out to be a nightmare for Haller, one that pushes him to the brink and puts his job, his life, and his family in danger. The cause is such a beautiful premise for a legal thriller that I don’t want to give too much away, but suffice it to say that Connelly found a unique way to increase the suspense inherent to a capital murder trial in a way that probably made other practitioners of the genre seethe with jealousy.
The Lincoln Lawyer is clearly the product of a nimble mind. The evidence of careful research into the practice of law is apparent on every page. But more importantly, Haller is an inherently compelling character. A smart and charismatic man who knows how to play all the angles and believes he can do so with his integrity intact, Haller is someone the reader will never tire of.
