Former Los Angeles Times crime reporter Michael Connelly had already built a strong police procedural franchise around Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch when he published The Lincoln Lawyer, and it introduced more than the detective’s half-brother. Mickey Haller, a defense lawyer who works out of his Town Car, offers discursive, densely plotted, and unapologetically cynical tours of the American justice system. It all starts in this 2005 novel with the case of a Beverly Hills scion who at least appears to be falsely accused of brutally attacking a woman. The play of shadow and light serves the ambiguities of both the story and of Haller, played by Matthew McConaughey in the 2011 movie adaptation (so memorably that he scored a Lincoln spokesman contract), and by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in the Netflix series that started in 2022. —Karl Vick
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