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Michael Connelly is one of my favorite crime writers but in his latest book, The Lincoln Lawyer, he tries his hand at legal fiction.
The result is mixed: The novel is better than the average legal thriller but it is inferior to Connelly’s other books.
The book’s title comes from the premise that the protagonist is a lawyer who does much of his business from the back of a Lincoln.
Without giving too much away let’s just say that the case he is working on becomes more complicated – legally, ethically and emotionally – than most of his cases and mayhem ensues.
Connelly, it should be recalled, was a police reporter for the Los Angeles Times before he wrote his first novel and he used some of his knowledge covering crime to make his books the works of art that they are.
I am not sure what made him try his hand at writing a story with the protagonist of a defense lawyer but I hope this is a one-shot deal.
Overall, the characters, the plot and the dialogue all seem less interesting than in his other works.
Ironically the characters who seem the less filled out – the most cliched and stereotypical – are the very people he usually excels at describing, police officers.
Connelly’s other book this year, The Closers, is a better read so if you are new to Connelly, start with that one, which I reviewed here. His best one remains The Poet.
