{"id":2733,"date":"2021-01-29T08:10:22","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T15:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2733"},"modified":"2021-01-29T08:10:22","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T15:10:22","slug":"the-most-important-client","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2733","title":{"rendered":"The most important client"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Moyer has a way of making we want to get a book and start reading right away! This one sounds particularly good.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer<\/p>\n

THE LAW OF INNOCENCE. By Michael Connelly. Little, Brown. 42 pages. $29.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mickey Haller is the Lincoln lawyer. He does most of his business in the back of a chauffeured Lincoln, much of that business with people who are guilty. He is to defense lawyers what his half-brother Harry Bosch is to detectives\u2014the best. Haller thinks of the prosecution as a solid, deep-rooted tree; he thinks of himself as \u201c…the man with the axe. My job is to cut the tree down to the ground and burn its wood to ashes.\u201d\u00a0In this latest installment, he needs a very sharp axe to save the most important client he has ever had \u2014himself.<\/p>\n

A few pages into the book the police arrest Haller for murder, the victim a client who owed him money. It\u2019s a frame, of course, but Haller comes up before a D.A. that he has beat like a drum and a judge whose case he overturned. Mickey Haller goes to jail.<\/p>\n

And he stays there most of the book. He and his crack team, which includes Bosch, have to put their case together while navigating the limitations of the prison and court system. Michael Connelly\u2019s skill makes that effort most interesting, as we follow the winding ins and outs of the case inside the courtroom and the investigation outside.<\/p>\n

They know whodunit early on, but the danger for the case builds. Will they find him?\u00a0Can they get him to court? \u00a0And can Haller himself stay alive inside the jail?\u00a0 Connelly always builds edge-of-your-seat suspense, but he ups himself here by adding a danger the reader is well aware of, but the book\u2019s cast isn\u2019t for some time \u2014the pandemic. In this early 2020 setting, hints appear\u2014a rumor about a Chinese virus, an incident in a Washington nursing home, masks. It\u2019s interesting that the addition of something we are so familiar with adds dread to the occasion for the reader, not the characters.<\/p>\n

After a finely tuned orchestration of incidents, including surprise discoveries, lying witnesses and, of course, the FBI, Haller finally sees the case coming together, the moment he starts \u201c…to get the visions I got before all my trials. Visions of witnesses on the stand, visions of me telling my story.\u201d After the case plays out in court, the story comes to a trademark Connelly double ending. The book is actually longer than most Connelly books, because of The Law of Innocence<\/em>\u2014as Haller says, \u201cthe only way to prove I didn\u2019t do it is to prove who did.\u201d\u00a0That takes a little time, and the reader gets to tag along on another Connelly triumph.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Moyer has a way of making we want to get a book and start reading right away! This one sounds particularly good. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer THE LAW OF INNOCENCE. By Michael Connelly. Little, Brown. 42 pages. $29. Mickey Haller is the Lincoln lawyer. He does most of his business in the back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[590,1074,5,14],"tags":[1181,627,1182,1183],"class_list":["post-2733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-legal-thriller","category-mysteries","category-thriller-suspense","tag-lincoln-lawyer","tag-michael-connelly","tag-mickey-haller","tag-the-law-of-innocence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2735,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2733\/revisions\/2735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}