Even I could summon a little sympathy for Haller this time around when the cops find a body in the trunk of his Lincoln after a pretext stop and then arrest and charge him with a murder he didn’t commit. Does anyone really believe Charles Mason deserved a vigorous defense? How about a man in a jealous rage that the evidence showed brutally stabbed to death his ex-wife and her boyfriend? Maybe the maxim should be, “Every innocent defendant deserves a vigorous defense.” Still, I understand that under our system, we presume everyone innocent until proving them guilty, so I know why that can’t be so.Īnyway, I admit it. I get it on some level when defense attorneys use the shopworn saying, “Every defendant deserves a vigorous defense.” But that’s hard to reconcile with reality sometimes. So, I’m hard pressed to see a defense attorney protagonist as anything more than an antihero, at best-a main character in a story who lacks conventional heroic qualities and attributes, such as idealism, courage, and morality. After twenty-five years of law enforcement experience, I’m not a fan of criminal defense attorneys, even fictional ones. And there is a reason for that, good or not. While I can’t get enough of Michael Connelly’s crime fiction, the Mickey Haller Lincoln Lawyer novels aren’t my favorites.
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