The Fifth Witness

A lack of paying criminal defendants has “Lincoln Lawyer” Mickey Haller—so called because his rolling office is a chauffeur-drive Lincoln Town Car—mass-marketing his legal services to people facing foreclosure. But when one of them, a loose cannon of a client constantly complaining to the media, is accused of murdering a banker, Haller suddenly has a criminal case after all. As usual for Connelly it’s immensely readable but not very memorable, and it never was clear to me why Haller was beat up at one point in the story.

The Drop

Connelly’s other series character, LAPD detective Harry Bosch, is working a cold case involving a weird DNA match—blood on a rape victim seems to tie to the crime to a someone far too young to have been the perpetrator—when his long-time nemesis, now a city councilman, pulls strings to have Bosch assigned to investigate the apparent suicide of his son, who either jumped, fell, or was pushed from a hotel room balcony. Once again it’s a very good read, and as usual I prefer Bosch to Haller.

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