The Lincoln Lawyer ***

*** The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly, 2005

The Lincoln Lawyer takes you on a great ride. I almost gave it 3.5 stars, but I felt like I was being disloyal to Bosch, so I left it at three. ;-) I remembered a lot about this going in and still loved every second of it. Haller is a protagonist every bit as engaging as Bosch, and maybe even more so, since he's not afflicted with Bosch's petulance, which he seems to be leaving behind, perhaps.

Ignoring Chasing the Dime, we have five protagonists from Connelly so far: Bosch, McEvoy, Walling, Caleb and Haller. Of those, I like Caleb the least. At this point Haller and Bosch are pretty much neck and neck at the top. That's good because I see Haller and Bosch appear together for three books in a row, The Brass Verdict, 9 Dragons and The Reversal. So I'm going to get to see my two favorites go head-to-head. It should be interesting. But first I have two more Bosch novels to get through.

This book is in first person, and now that Bosch has returned to the force, he's in third person. It will be interesting to see how Connelly handles it. With The Narrows, he did the Bosch POV scenes in first person and the Walling and Bachus scenes in third. I expect he'll do something similar, with Haller in first this time and Bosch in third, assuming Bosch is still on the force. I haven't read those books before, so who knows what's happened to him by then.

The movie based on this book starring Matt McConaughey comes out tomorrow. I'll be there. From the trailer it looks like they made a few changes.