Book Review 12: "The Lincoln Lawyer"

The Lincoln Lawyer
Michael Connelly
Warner Books
508 Pages

Every once in a while daddy needs to read a little trash. While I am hesitant to buy books like this in hard back there really is nothing else like a hold in one hand paperback page turner. Soooo...it was Mogerman’s fault that I read this. Let me start by saying that and so absolve myself from the guilty pleasure of michael Connelly’s book. I was not formerly familiar with his work and this book will not really force me to go seek him out but this was a fun read. It was reccomended on the basis of the premise that this lawyer out in LA had no office but practiced out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car. He had a driver, who was a former client partially working off a debt and an ex wife to took messages and handled his books. It sounded...intruiging.

Sadly...it was intuiging. The protagonist Michael Haller is a criminal lawyer with a daughter and two ex wives and all three still love him...and he them. There is some seediness involved in his practice. Drug dealers, murderers, motercycle gang members, prostitutes with hearts of gold...the whole nine yards. A lot of it is trite and simple and frankly that is what makes it works. I am not a reader of Crime or Detective or Mystery or whatever you call this genre but it hooks you in pretty good early and then takes you for a ride....in this case in a Lincoln Town Car. The characters in the book are simply drawn but generally believable and likable.

Haller is a classic lost middle aged man who is unsure of his calling but too busy to think too much about it. Early on in the book he gets hooked up with a “Franchise” case. A rich guy who is accused of trying to murder (afting beating her) a prostitute. The client in the beginning appears to be hapless, somewhat pathetic scion of a reach domineering mother in the real estate business but as the character develops the readers view of him changes slowly and then on accelerating curve as you see him as a soul less, amoral source of almost unbelievable evil. The transformation is handeled well and just being in this guys orbit starts to screw with our heros life in a main way. In the end evil is stymied and a new slightly unexpected evil is just plain shot dead.

One of the over arching themes of the book is the typical quandery of a criminal lawyer. How can you do this? How can you represent people who you know are evil? While our guy starts strong and brusque regarding peoples constitutional rights and how he is a needed check and balance in the system by the end he...and the reader are questioning whether ALL people are really entitled to a defense and whether some people are so evil that vigilante justice is really the only “right” result. Our protagonist the defense lawyer (hero?) is excited about the money he will make but as the case goes on the money becomes not so important when faced with the safety of those he loves and perhaps... on a larger scale his own soul come into play. Finally the book is about choices and about redemption and though they are big picture things they are not given big picture treatment. As far as good, evil, having a conscience and building meaningful relationships and leading a meaningful life....this is the MTV version. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

There are many plot twists and turns and keeps the interest throughout it’s almost 500 paper back pages. It is reasonably hard to put down as if you read it every night before bed (as I do) you go to bed each night thinking things are not as they seem and focusing on yet another twist and wondering where it will take you. The important thing about “The Lincoln Lawyer” and I assume other books of the genre is that even when it seems hopeless...you know in your heart it is going to end well. Sometimes you need that. This one should be made into a movie.