ByVal Hull
Michael Connelly is undeniably one of the most prominent mystery writers of our time. He’s been publishing mysteries since all the way back in 1992, and to date, he has a total of 38 novels to his name, with a new one – The Waiting – scheduled to drop on October 15, 2024. His writing style resembles a more modern take on the hardboiled stuff served up by the likes of Raymond Chandler, and his meticulous attention to police and courtroom procedure makes his books feel truly alive and real.
With such enduring popularity, it’s unsurprising that Michael Connelly’s works transcended print media. His novels Blood Work and The Lincoln Lawyer were adapted into Hollywood movies starring Clint Eastwood and Matthew McConaughey. And these days, when the small screen is king, the Connelly-verse is ever-expanding. Bosch, a TV show focusing on Connelly’s most famous character, ran for 7 seasons on Amazon Prime Video. Its spin-off Bosch: Legacy is currently slated to get its third season on Amazon Freevee next year, with a yet untitled Renée Ballard show currently also lingering in pre-production at Amazon.
Not content to let Amazon have all the glory, back in 2022 Netflix kicked off its own take on The Lincoln Lawyer, with the show’s third season releasing for streaming on October 17, 2024. This upcoming third season will be based on The Gods of Guilt, the fifth Michael Connelly novel following the courtroom adventures of Mickey Haller. If this seems a little confusing, keep in mind that outside of his own series, Haller also appeared as a supporting character in several Connelly novels focusing on Harry Bosch, which further ups the level of confusion for anyone looking to get into The Lincoln Lawyer series.
So, whether you want to engage in some companion reading before watching the Netflix show, or if you’re just looking for some top-shelf courtroom mysteries similar to Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason stories, this article will help you better understand The Lincoln Lawyer chronology and choose the right novel for you.
While Michael Connelly’s books tend to follow a clear internal timeline, his naming conventions make it downright impossible to figure this timeline out at a glance. As such, below we’ll list The Lincoln Lawyer books in order. The bolded entries indicate a mainline Lincoln Lawyer book, while the indented ones are those where Mickey Haller is second chair to Connelly’s premiere detective Harry Bosch.
Michael Connelly’s books may be written in sequential order, with each one developing its characters and pushing their overarching stories and relationships forward, but at the same time, each book can be read as a standalone mystery where you don’t necessarily need to know the extended familial relations between the characters to enjoy their thrilling adventures. And with there being close to 40 books in the greater series now, you’ll be forgiven if you don’t start at the very beginning with 1992’s The Black Echo and go down the list one by one.
If you like your mysteries with a side dish of courtroom drama, you might just want to focus on The Lincoln Lawyer series or even just a particular book in the series. If so, we’ll make your choice easier for you by providing brief overviews below.
The book that started it all. This wasn’t Michael Connelly’s first attempt at creating a new protagonist to lighten the load on his workhorse Bosch, but it was the first one to turn into a mainstay series in the Connelly-verse.
The Lincoln Lawyer focuses on Mickey Haller, a lawyer of some renown who still struggles to make ends meet in the cutthroat legal scene of Los Angeles. A man of the people with a strong sense of justice and plenty of tricks up his sleeve, Mickey Haller prefers to work out of his car to being stuck at the office. When opportunity calls and offers Haller the big break he’s been waiting for, he grabs onto it with both hands, only to realize he’s been swindled and now has to employ every one of his tricks to save his legal career and his life. Much like the old Perry Mason stories, The Lincoln Lawyer combines courtroom drama with plenty of detective work, where Haller has to first solve the mystery, which then allows him to present a winning case in court.
The book is written in first person and describes in great detail the intricacies of the LA legal machine, making it a very immersive read. This is the story that became the basis of the Matthew McConaughey movie and is overall a great place to start your Lincoln Lawyer journey.
Now a proper series, The Brass Verdict is where the Lincoln Lawyer finds his footing. The murder of a high-profile attorney allows Haller to drastically expand his client list. Among his new clients is one Walter Elliott, a Hollywood producer accused of killing his wife. Winning this case is sure to catapult Haller into lawyer stardom. However, he soon realizes that not everything is what it seems, and if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
The Brass Verdict is the first book to feature both Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch, and by the end, we learn that the two of them are half-brothers, a fact hinted at as early as The Black Ice, the second novel in the main Bosch series. This creates a connection between the two that becomes a mainstay of the Connelly-verse from this point onwards.
The Netflix show uses The Brass Verdict as the basis for its first season. Only because Amazon has the rights to Harry Bosch, his character is replaced by another detective in the show, one without a family connection to Haller. And with the show taking place in modern-day LA, while the book is set roughly two decades ago, Haller’s big client becomes a prominent video game developer instead of a Hollywood mogul. All these little changes make The Brass Verdict worth reading even if you’ve seen the show.
Nine Dragons is a pivotal Harry Bosch novel. In it, a case takes him all the way to Hong Kong where he reunites one last time with Eleanor Wish – his on-again, off-again ex-wife and one-time nemesis, and has to save his daughter Maddie from kidnappers. The events of this book completely change the family dynamics for Bosch. And with family being such an important theme of the book, Mickey Haller naturally makes an appearance. He deftly puts a stop to the Chinese government’s attempts to extradite Harry after he comes back to LA with Maddie in tow.
A book packed with events that send big ripples across the Connelly-verse, exciting fresh locations, and a cameo from the Lincoln Lawyer – Nine Dragons is great as both part of the bigger series and a standalone adventure.
The Reversal is primarily a Lincoln Lawyer novel and follows that series’ beats, but with the ties between Bosch and Haller strengthened by the events depicted in Nine Dragons, it now treats Harry Bosch as a second protagonist and not just a supporting character.
True to its name, The Reversal has Haller switching sides and acting as a prosecutor on a major case. Bosch in turn, acts as the main investigator of the story, giving us all a nice taste of Law & Order. If you consider lawyers to be a sleazy bunch of opportunists and instead prefer seeing criminals brought to justice, The Reversal is the book for you.
To have some fun with counting, we have to start by letting you know that The Fifth Witness, which is the fourth novel in the mainline Lincoln Lawyer series, is the basis of the second season of the Netflix show. The story sees Haller going back to his defense attorney roots and initially mostly focusing on assorted cases of foreclosures caused by an economic downturn. He then has to shift gears when one of his clients is accused of murder. And while initially he’s convinced of her innocence, eventually he begins having his doubts about that.
As is often the case with adaptations, the Netflix show takes some liberties with the story. And while changing some minor things to add a romantic storyline and update the reasons for the economic downturn is very much understandable, the show then changes the ultimate resolution of the central mystery. So, if you want to know what really happened in The Fifth Witness, you should read the book.
With the third season of The Lincoln Lawyer show set to go live on Netflix on October 17, 2024, now’s the time to check out The Gods of Guilt – the novel the upcoming season is based on. The novel feels very personal in that the main victim that sets off the story’s events is Haller’s old friend and he blames himself for her death. This forces him to reexamine what it is he does and whether he wants to keep doing it.
Add to this family troubles, Mexican cartels, and corrupt cops, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for an exciting mystery that will keep you thrilled and entertained.
The Crossing is a novel similar to The Reversal, only this time it’s Harry Bosch who has to cross to the other side and help his brother Mickey Haller prove a client’s innocence. Haller plays a smaller part in The Crossing than Bosch does in The Reversal, but he’s still there for most of it. And on top of that, we also get to spend some time with Maddie Bosch, Harry’s daughter and his legacy.
Which brings us to Bosch: Legacy, the Amazon show. Its second season is primarily based on The Crossing. But once again, due to Amazon doing Bosch and Netflix The Lincoln Lawyer, we don’t see the brothers team up on the small screen. So, if you want to see them both together in action, reading The Crossing is your best bet.
In another instance of adaptation-related temporal anomalies, The Wrong Side of Goodbye follows The Crossing in the book chronology, but it’s used as the basis for the first season of Bosch: Legacy. The show version of the story elevates Maddie Bosch to a major player and essentially a co-protagonist, while again replacing Mickey Haller with a different lawyer.
And so, once again, if you’re looking for your next Lincoln Lawyer fix, reading The Wrong Side of Goodbye will give you just that, as you silently curse the labyrinthine IP laws that prevent the two brothers from ever appearing together on screen.
Throughout his stories, Harry Bosch is often described as a man on a mission. His dogged determination and unwavering belief that “everyone counts or nobody counts” make him a great detective, but they don’t leave him with a lot of friends on the force. As such, when an old case of his is threatened to be overturned, and the perp’s lawyers are claiming that Bosch only got a conviction by planting evidence, it falls to Mickey Haller to help his half-brother out of a jam.
Haller is a secondary character in this story, with Bosch taking center stage when a 30-year-old case of his gets intertwined with a fresh double homicide and forces him to reevaluate the kinds of truth there are in the world.
The Night Fire is somewhat of an ensemble novel in that it features all three of Connelly’s main protagonists – Harry Bosch, Mickey Haller, and Renée Ballard. Sadly for the Lincoln Lawyer enthusiasts, Haller takes a back seat here to the other two characters. Bosch and Ballard have to work together to solve a murder that managed to stump Bosch’s recently deceased mentor. The two grow closer together over the course of the book and develop a sense of mutual respect.
Mickey Haller, in the meantime, is busy dealing with a case that revolves around a Superior Court judge’s murder. And as is usually the case, he’s great in every scene he’s in, so at least there’s something to sink our courtroom drama-craving teeth in.
Prior to The Law Of Innocence, we’ve seen Mickey Haller as a defense attorney and a prosecutor. Which leaves him with just two key courtroom roles. And no, he’s not acting as a judge in The Law Of Innocence. Instead, he has to play the defendant when a body is found in the trunk of his car.
Working out of a prison cell, dealing with jailhouse snitches and attempts on his life, the Lincoln Lawyer has to prove his innocence in record time. And while Mickey is stuck inside, his half-brother Harry Bosch will be doing everything in his power to assist Mickey in his investigation.
The latest books of the Connelly-verse all feel like they’re preparing the readers for the inevitable. In the books’ internal chronology, Harry Bosch is a Vietnam War veteran. This makes him quite old, at times implausibly so, for an action hero. But with him being such a big staple of Michael Connelly’s works, he can’t just be written out without a proper setup.
In comes Desert Star, a novel predominantly focusing on the joint adventures of Bosch and Renée Ballard as it drives home the point that while Harry still got it, a generational shift is inevitable at this point. And while Mickey Haller is barely a secondary character here, he still plays a key role in Bosch’s personal life and helps set up the events of the next mainline Lincoln Lawyer book.
Resurrection Walk is the latest Lincoln Lawyer novel. It continues the trend started by Desert Star and reiterates that Harry Bosch is not long for this world, what with his advanced age and some pretty severe health issues.
Those don’t stop him, however, from acting as a co-protagonist of Resurrection Walk. The book’s main case is built around clearing a wrongfully convicted woman’s name and getting her out of prison while seeing that those really responsible pay for what they did. Both the main and the secondary plots of the novel help Bosch to once again reevaluate his long career and feel like another few heavy steps towards the detective’s final retirement.
Bosch’s and Haller’s daughters feature prominently in the book, both of them following in their father’s footsteps but in their own unique ways. In the meantime, with all these overarching plots, the classic Lincoln Lawyer courtroom scenes remain as entertaining as ever, with Connelly exploring the latest real-world technologies and their potential uses for the legal system. So, while the book is definitely bittersweet for the fans of Harry Bosch, the Lincoln Lawyer enthusiasts are eating well here and should be more than satisfied by Mickey Haller’s latest showing.
Which of The Lincoln Lawyer books are your favorite? Which ones are you looking forward to reading? Don’t hesitate to let us know.
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