Connelly, Michel. The Fifth Witness.

NY: Little, Brown, 2011.

The last few entries in Connelly’s long-running police procedural series featuring Detective Harry Bosch of the LAPD have, frankly, been pretty weak, as if the author has become as weary of his character as Bosch is of the world in general. Perhaps as an antidote, he began a new series a few years ago, also set in Los Angeles, starring Mickey Haller, a defense attorney (and therefore the natural enemy of the police), known as the “Lincoln lawyer” because he doesn’t maintain an actual office, preferring to do business from the fully-equipped back seat of an armored, bullet-proof Lincoln Town Car while being driven from client to courthouse to police division all over Greater LA.

Connelly, Michael. The Reversal.

NY: Little, Brown, 2010.

The idea here is an interesting one — Mickey Haller, hardcore defense attorney and protagonist of The Lincoln Lawyer, is invited by the DA to sign on as a special prosecutor in the re-trial of a convicted murderer sprung from San Quentin after twenty-four years by genetic evidence that didn’t match. Haller has misgivings but it’s a challenge he finds he can’t resist –