The Gods of Guilt (Lincoln Lawyer) by Michael Connelly

Description

Defense attorney Mickey Haller returns with a haunting case in the gripping new thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly.

Mickey Haller gets the text, “Call me ASAP – 187,” and the California penal code for murder immediately gets his attention. Murder cases have the highest stakes and the biggest paydays, and they always mean Haller has to be at the top of his game.

When Mickey learns that the victim was his own former client, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow path, he knows he is on the hook for this one. He soon finds out that she was back in LA and back in the life. Far from saving her, Mickey may have been the one who put her in danger.

Haunted by the ghosts of his past, Mickey must work tirelessly and bring all his skill to bear on a case that could mean his ultimate redemption or proof of his ultimate guilt. The Gods of Guilt shows once again why “Michael Connelly excels, easily surpassing John Grisham in the building of courtroom suspense” (Los Angeles Times).

Editoral Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, December 2013: What distinguishes Connelly's Lincoln Lawyer books from the average legal thriller (in the same way his Harry Bosch series transcends “cop story”) is the complicated likeability of his flawed hero, Mickey Haller, a criminal defense lawyer who works mostly from the backseat of a chauffeured Lincoln Town Car. In The Gods of Guilt, Haller agrees to defend a former client's pimp on a murder charge, and his messy past comes back to taunt him–an ideal introduction to Haller for newcomers, and catnip for fans. As a former newspaper court reporter, I've always appreciated Connelly's attention to the messy particulars of the legal system, and his ability to convey real courtroom drama, the humanity and inanity of bringing criminals to justice–or not. (The title refers to the imperfect judgment of a jury.) Like his peers, Laura Lippman and George Pelecanos, Connelly writes crime fiction verging subversively on literature, and Haller is becoming an increasingly complex literary figure, cruising LA's darkest corners in a style that feels like a modern twist on Chinatown. (Think Clint Eastwood-Dirty Harry-San Francisco, but in LA, and without the big guns and the unresolved anger.) Incredibly, Connelly just keeps getting better. —Neal Thompson