Finished up The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly last week. This is the fourth book in Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer series featuring defense attorney Mickey Haller. I started reading the series a few months ago because Connelly has Haller heavily intertwined in his Harry Bosch series. I started reading the Bosch series when we watched the series on Amazon a few years ago. Haller had small parts in a few of the earlier books, but is in several of the later books. I wanted to be current on both series to experience the books like I had read them when they were released
I wasn’t sure if Connelly could pull off creating a second character that, despite his flaws and weaknesses, you admire and pull for as much as Bosch. He managed to do this with Mickey Haller for me. The Fifth Witness is a solid legal procedural with good cadence and enough plot twits to keep you engaged.
The Fifth Witness
By Michael Connelly
In tough times, crime is one of the few things that still pays, but if defense attorney Mickey Haller was expecting an uptick in business during the economic downturn, the reality is a different story. Even people needing legal representation to keep them out of jail are having to make cutbacks, it seems. In fact, the most significant part of Mickey’s business right now is not about keeping clients out of jail but about keeping a roof over their heads, as the foreclosure boom hits thousands of people who were granted unrealistic mortgages in the good times and now face being kicked to the curb in the bad times.
Lisa Trammel has been a client of Mickey’s for eight months — his very first foreclosure case, in fact — and although so far he’s managed to stop the bank from taking her house, the strain and sense of injustice have taken a toll. The bank recently got a restraining order to prevent her from protesting against their practices. Now, a high level bank employee, Mitchell Bondurant, has been found dead in the bank’s parking lot and Lisa is about to be indicted for murder. For Mickey, it’s back to what he does best on the biggest stage of all, but if he thought defending Lisa Trammel was going to be a walk in the park, he’d be wrong. Not only is he about to learn some startling truths about his client, but also about himself, and by the time the verdict is in, Mickey’s whole world will have been turned upside down.
Published April 5, 2011
417 pages (print)