Matt Hunter's life has already been blown away once. At the age of twenty, he got into a fight outside a party and accidentally killed someone. That momentary lapse of reason cost him four years in gaol, and a small sliver of his soul. When Matt got out he set about rebuilding his life. He carved himself a job as a lawyer and married a beautiful woman. The break in the road seems to have only made him a stronger person. However, when he receives a strange video message on his mobile phone and he realises that a very bad man is following him, his new existence is suddenly under threat. Why is this ex-con on his tail, and who really is this woman he has married? Suddenly Matt can't trust anybody – least of all those he loves.
New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly delivers his first legal thriller an incendiary tale about a cynical defense attorney whose one remaining spark of integrity may cost him his life.
Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn't recognize innocence if it stood in front of him. Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense pro who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, to defend clients at the bottom of the legal food chain. It's no wonder that he is despised by cops, prosecutors, and even some of his own clients.
From bokers to con artists to drunk drivers and drug dealers, they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. But when a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman Haller has his first high paying client in years. It's a franchise case and he's sure it will be a slam dunk in the courtroom. For once, he may be defending a client who is actually innocent.
But an investigator is murdered for getting too close to the truth and Haller quickly discovers that his search for innocence has taken him face to face with a kind of evil as pure as a flame. To escape without being burned, Haller must use all of his skills to manipulate a system in which he no longer believes.
Anthony Awards
The apparent suicide of his policeman brother sets Denver crime reporter Jack McEvoy on edge. Surprise at the circumstances of his brother's death prompts Jack to look into a whole series of police suicides and puts him on the trail of a cop killer whose victims are selected all too carefully. Not only that, but they all leave suicide notes drawn from the poems of writer Edgar Allan Poe in their wake. More frightening still the killer appears to know that Jack is getting nearer and nearer. An investigation that looks like being the story of a lifetime, might also be Jack's ticket to a lonely end.
Jack McEvoy is at the end of the line as a crime reporter. Forced to take a buy-out from the LA Times as the newspaper grapples with dwindling readership and revenues, he's got 30 days left on the job. His last assignment? Training his replacement, a low cost reporter just out of J-school who couldn't find the police station if it was right next store to the Times, which it is. But Jack has other plans for his exit. He is going to go out with a bang – a final story that will win the newspaper journalism's highest honor – a Pulitzer prize. Jack focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer from the projects who has confessed to police that he brutally raped and strangled one of his crack clients. Jack convinces Alonzo's mother to cooperate with his investigation into the possibility of her son's innocence. But she has fallen for the oldest reporter's trick in the book. Jack's real intention is to use his access to report and write a story that explains how societal dysfunction and neglect created a 16-year-old killer. But as Jack delves into the story he soon realizes that Alonzo's so-called confession is bogus, and Jack is soon off and running on the biggest story he's had since The Poet crossed his path twelve years before.
This time Jack is onto a killer who has worked completely below police and FBI radar. His investigation leads him into the digital world of data collocation services where server farms are watched over by techs who liken themselves to scarecrows – keeping the birds of prey off their clients' data. But Jack inadvertently set off a digital tripwire and the killer – the Scarecrow – knows he's coming.