The book that started the series, The Lincoln Lawyer, is insanely addictive.

This isn’t Michael Connelly’s debut in the world of literary fiction, he’s been around much longer than that. His primary and more popular character till this point has been Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, but with The Lincoln Lawyer we see the debut of crack defense attorney, Mickey Haller (who is also, incidentally, Bosch’s half-brother).

And his stories too, are bloody exciting.

Mickey Haller has earned the moniker “Lincoln Lawyer” because he conducts his business not out of an office, but from the back of his range of Lincoln town cars. He’s a lawyer always on the go, taking on any and every case that comes his way to keep the motor running - and due to the nature of his legal hemisphere, he does have to deal with a whole boatload of unsavory characters, many of them more guilty than innocent.

But Haller has no qualms about his clientele. He sleeps well at night knowing that everyone deserves to have a proper defense in a court of law. That’s all that there is to it. It’s the law, and he respects it.

So, when he is notified of a rich kid in jail seeking legal representation by Haller in particular, all of it just sounds too good to be true. This case could keep Haller flush with funds for a long, long time. He is ready to defend a young man charged with the brutal assault of a sex worker, with the actual intent to kill her.

The preliminary character introductions are swift and out of the way within the first few pages and we’re on to the real meat of the plot. And it’s an absolute breeze to see Mickey Haller go about his business, his ups and downs through the case, his relationships bloom and blossom - and oh, the shocks and reversals are absolutely spell-binding. You just cannot stop reading, it’s just that good.

The only other courtroom drama series that I’ve been familiar with are the Perry Mason books by Earl Stanley Gardner - and while I’m truly a big fan of mostly all those books, they do feel a bit dated (I’m not even getting into the gender definitions there). That, of course, does not feature at all in The Lincoln Lawyer. I don’t know how accurate the legal details and processes are in the book, I will never know, but not for once do they break through my willing suspension of disbelief. It all seems legit, and at no point does fatigue set in. This is a proper thriller, in every sense of the term.

The Lincoln Lawyer has been adapted into a movie, with Mathew McConaughey playing the lead role of Mickey Haller. And while the movie is good just the way it is, it lacks the crazy pace and fluid narration that the book provides. I wouldn’t even call the movie a Cliff Notes version of the book, it’s not completely honest to the original - but the book wins, hands down.

The Lincoln Lawyer is now also a series on Netflix, with Manuel Garcia-Rulfo the new Mickey Haller. And between the movie and the series, the latter is the clear winner. But we’ll have to speak about this in a very different article that might come up on the website soon.

Back to the original thesis, The Lincoln Lawyer is a ravishing read, and sets the tone for the rest of the books in the series. And don’t be too surprised if you see yourself going through the entire lot one after the other, just like I did.

After all - “There is no client as scary as an innocent man.”