November 1, 2016
Book 1 - The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
This is the first book in the Twitter list that I started in November 2016. What a wonderful book. I picked this up in the local library in the apartment complex I live in Singapore. I have picked up many books in the list there.
This book got me addicted (again) to crime, detective and lawyer books after the amazing Perry Mason books I used to read in high school.
Michael Connelly is an amazing writer. The characters he has created, both Mickey Haller, who is the protagonist of this book and Harry Bosch are just amazing.
I loved how Mickey’s and Harry’s characters are related, but then not too close either.
An ongoing theme in Connelly’s books are his character’s back stories which are slowly revealed and while they might not be part of the main story in each book plot, they form an overall meta arc of the storytelling. In Bosch’s case it is his history with finding and solving cold cases, particularly his own mother’s murder.
In Mickey’s case it is his working environments in the Lincoln automobile and his connections for example to the biker club, Hell’s Angels, who he helps in one case, but also becomes indebted to in later situations.
Both are set in Los Angeles and reading a few of them gives you a visceral feel of the city. One I have not visited, but have heard so much of.
Anyway, I was absolutely blown away by this book, my introduction to Michael Connelly’s work and you will find in the list many more books by him.
Some interesting trivia:
After reading this book, I watched Matthew McConaughey starring movie based on the book. It was good and enjoyable
In 2019, I started playing LA Noire, an addictively compulsive police detective game set in Los Angeles of the 1940s. The the game is a cult icon in its own right and amazing, but I particularly enjoyed it more because of the visual sense of Los Angeles that I had got from reading the Michael Connelly books. Its remarkable how realistic the game’s city was, and how it has remained same half a century and more later as portrayed in the books, movies and TV shows.
Speaking of TV shows, the Netflix show ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ in 2022 is amazing and I binged it. I have since also binged on Amazon Prime’s ‘Bosch’ series which is older. Both are gripping and amazing with Titus Welliver in particular being Bosch personified. Its sort of sad though for a book fan that the Netflix and Amazon series wont see the characters cross over. Bosch and Mickey are paternal half brothers, but Amazon Prime and Netflix are unfortunately not.
