Crime Fiction Writer Michael Connelly: THE LAW OF INNOCENCE (Book #6 of the Mickey Haller Series)

The Manchester Library Mystery Book Club read this book in March, 2025.

This post is in two parts: PART 1 is information for anyone interested in this book.

PART 2 (near the bottom, below a warning barrier) is information for those who have read the book — expect spoilers about the book, and including any comments made about the book in the comments area.

Blurb for The Law of Innocence

LA defense attorney Mickey Haller uses his car, a Lincoln, to do his case preparation instead of renting office space. One late evening, after celebrating a “Not Guilty” victory at the Redwood Bar, Mickey is pulled over by police, who find the body of a client in the trunk of his Lincoln. He is charged with murder and can’t make the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge.

Mickey elects to defend himself and must strategize and build his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles. Because as a lawyer he is considered an “officer of the court,” he is a sure target while in jail and is forced to be on guard, looking over his shoulder.

Mickey knows he’s been framed. Now, with the help of his trusted team, he has to figure out who has plotted to destroy his life and why. Then he has to go before a judge and jury and prove his innocence.

Video Blurb (Trailer) for This Book (1 minute)

What to Expect With This Book

About the Author!

Michael Connelly was born in Philadelphia, PA on July 21, 1956. He moved to Florida with his family when he was 12 years old.

Early Years and First Career

I was an introverted kid. I like to read a lot. So much so, that one of my nicknames was “the book addict.” I would stay in my room and read books a lot of times. Of course I read the Hardy Boys, but my mother gave me my first [adult] mystery book, I don’t remember which book, but it was probably an Agatha Christie book – she loved those types of books. Also, when I was 12, I read To Kill a Mockingbird, which probably pushed me toward stories with a little more grit to them. [Source 3]

At age 16, Connelly’s interest in crime and mystery escalated when, on his way home from his work as a hotel dishwasher, he witnessed a man throw an object into a hedge. Connelly decided to investigate and found that the object was a gun wrapped in a lumberjack shirt. After putting the gun back, he followed the man to a bar and then left to go home to tell his father. Later that night, Connelly brought the police down to the bar, but the man was already gone. This event introduced Connelly to the world of police officers and their lives, impressing him with the way they worked.

Connelly went to the University of Florida and began taking engineering courses in order to join his father in the construction business. While in college, at age 19…

I went to a movie based on The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. One of the things about my reading taste at the time was, I liked contemporary stuff. For example, I wasn’t reading Dashiell Hammett or anything like that. The movie itself was contemporary, but it was based on the book published 30 years before. So, I grudgingly went and read the book. It really opened my mind and I read the rest of the Raymond Chandler books in about a two-week period. That was when I began to think: “I want to try to do this someday, if I’m lucky.” [Source 3]

What was it about Chandler that stirred him so much that began to think of being a writer?

It was something about the protagonist’s character, Marlowe, it was contradictory; it was cynical but hopeful, very sardonic, very like “Prince of the City” – he is a private eye, he is an outsider looking in, but he knows the secret, he knows how the machine works. To me, that was really interesting, especially about the outsider looking in. I was in college at the time, and I very much felt that way. I wasn’t having a great time and I felt like an outsider, so it’s really kind of connected to me at that point. [Underlining is my emphasis. Source 3]

Make a mental note of the origin of the “outsider” theme!

His father gave him some good advice which he followed: If you really want to write crime novels, you should major in journalism and get a job as a crime reporter. That way you get to practice your writing and you get to learn about how crimes are investigated.

SIDE NOTE: RESPECT to Michael’s father who “played along” with 16 year old Michael and the “Case of the Stashed Gun” (instead of yelling at him like a lot of fathers would have), and then accepted Michael’s passion for writing a novel with good advice (instead of insisting he had to work in his father’s construction firm).

After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat. In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars.

In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The honor also brought Connelly a job as a crime reporter at the Los Angeles Times. He moved to California in 1987 with his wife Linda McCaleb, whom he met while in college and married in April 1984.

During his first three years at the Times, with Linda’s support, he spent four nights a week plus one full day each weekend, writing two unfinished novels that he did not attempt to get published….

I had been a voracious reader of crime fiction. When I finished each of these first novels, I held them up against what I had been reading. Every writer is his own harshest critic, and I knew that each of the two books was missing something, I wasn’t sure what, but I knew they didn’t deserve to be published. It was a learning process, and I knew I could do better…. [On the other hand, after writing] the third book I knew it should be published, I knew would be published. Based on how I compared that to what I had been reading. [Source 3]

That third book was The Black Echo featuring an LAPD police detective named Harry Bosch. When he found an agent that liked his manuscript, the agent told him to begin work on a second novel with the same character immediately. It was good advice; Little Brown signed a two-book contract with Connelly around May of 1990 but the first book wasn’t published until January of 1992. At that point he had completed and submitted Bosch Book #2, The Black Ice.

When he first lived in the city, Connelly made a point of moving to a new house almost every year; he estimates that he has lived in almost 20 different LA neighborhoods.

Harry Bosch, though, has always lived in the same spot at 7207 Woodrow Wilson Drive, in a stilt house with an enviable view of Universal City and North Hollywood beyond to the north. Connelly says he decided on the location while covering a real murder as a reporter.

It was about 1989. A woman had been shot and left in the middle of the street, right in front of David Hockney’s house. I was cooling my heels, waiting for the cops to tell us what was going on, and I started walking around the neighborhood. I was writing the first Bosch book at the time. I found a spot where a stilt house had burned down, and they’d cleared away the rubble so that all that was left was the stilts and a platform. I built Harry’s house on that spot. [Source 4]

Writing Career: First 15 Books

The Black Echo was a huge success, winning the Edgar Award for best mystery of the year from the Mystery Writers of America (peer-based). It was also a finalist for the best mystery award at the Bouchercon Conference (reader-based).

Connelly went on to write three more novels about Detective Bosch—Book #2, The Black Ice (1993), Book #3, The Concrete Blonde (1994), and Book #4, The Last Coyote (1995)—before quitting his job as a reporter to write full-time.

He received a good deal of publicity in 1994, when President Bill Clinton came out of a bookstore carrying a copy of The Concrete Blonde in front of the waiting cameras. A meeting was set up between the two at Los Angeles International Airport.

Of the next 11 books, only 7 were about LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. Connelly liked trying out new ideas.

• #5 The Poet is less of a police procedural and more of a thriller. In this book a serial killer is gradually revealed through the efforts of a Colorado newspaper investigative reporter, Jack McEvoy, who will appear in 4 more books. The Poet also introduces Rachel Walling, an FBI agent who will appear in eight more books. Finally, the book is a prequel for book #14, The Narrows in which McEvoy and Bosch work together.
• #7 Blood Work does not include Harry, but introduces a former FBI profiler, Terry McCaleb who will appear in two subsequent books involving Harry.
• #9 Void Moon features a woman that plans “the perfect heist” that goes terribly wrong. It is completely a stand-alone book.
• #12 Chasing the Dime features a man tries to help a woman in trouble, only to become a muirder suspect. This too, is completely a stand-alone book

Harry Bosch is back in Book #13, Lost Light, but as a private investigator. (He quit the LAPD at the end of Book #11, City of Bones.) in Book #14, Harry handles another case as a private investigator.

In Book #15, The Closers, Harry returns to work at the LAPD through a program designed to bring back experienced good performers; it was called the Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP). This was a real thing at the time and the then real LAPD Chief William Bratton actually suggested the idea to Connelly – bring Harry back to the LAPD through the DROP.

Writing Career: Book 16 – Enter Mickey Haller – The Lincoln Lawyer

After moving to Los Angeles, Connelly had gone to see High Tower Court where Raymond Chandler’s film version of Philip Marlowe had been made in the 1942 movie based on The High Window. It is also the building used in Robert Altman’s film The Long Goodbye, the film that had captured the imagination of Connelly while in college in 1973. Connelly got the manager of the building to promise to phone him if the apartment ever became available.

Years later, the manager had tracked Connelly down, and Connelly decided to rent the famous apartment from the films. This apartment served as a place to write for several years including about 2002-2005. (Book #13, Lost Light) opens with a crime scene in the street level garage area.

In 2005, while at the apartment, Connelly came out with a new character, a defense lawyer named Michael (Mickey) Haller. Both for convenience and to save money, he uses his car for an office, hence, The Lincoln Lawyer.

With this new character, Connelly has an outsider with no badge. Copos don’t like defense attorneys. Even Mickey’s wife and daughter are on his case for helping scumbags.

Connelly made a promotional video for The Lincoln Lawyer while in the High Tower apartment: This is a transcript of Connelly’s narration:

I am here to tell you about my new book, The Lincoln Lawyer. But the journey to write it probably began 30 years ago when I saw the movie, The Long Goodbye. Something about the central character in this film, the private detective, Philip Marlowe, hooked me very deeply. I think it was because he was a classic outsider. Not only did the cops not like him, but he himself felt displaced, he felt like he was outside society looking in. The film led me to the books. In a matter of two weeks, I read all 7 of Raymond Chandler’s novels. When I came out of that tunnel, I had one idea – and that was that I wanted to become a writer. For the most part, I write about a detective named Harry Bosch, an LAPD Detective, and though at times he feels like an outsider, he still carries the badge. It was not until I wrote The Lincoln Lawyer, that I feel that I am writing about a classic outsider that matches the inspiration for me becoming a writer. [Underlining is my emphasis. Source 5]

In Book #19 (the 2nd Mickey Haller book), The Brass Verdict, Mickey has taken on a high profile murder case with the upside being a chance for a decent paycheck. The downside is that he took over the case from that client’s murdered lawyer. It happens that Detective Harry Bosch is investigating the lawyer’s death, and warning Mickey that his life could be in danger.

By the end of The Brass Verdict, it is clear that Harry (age 57) has known for years that Mickey (age 42) is his half-brother by a different mother, but never felt comfortable approaching him. For Mickey, learning that Detective Harry Bosch is his half-brother is a surprise.

We next meet Mickey Haller in Book #21, at the end of a Harry Bosch story, Nine Dragons, when Harry needs a lawyer to help solve some legal issues.

Mickey Haller continues to appear as a major or minor character in books with Harry Bosch and in two books with no Bosch at all. Which brings us to Connelly book #35, The Law of Innocence.

Again, the book opens in the fall of 2019, when Harry is now 69 and Mickey is 54, and both of their daughters have just graduated from Chapman College and are stepping into their own careers: Hayley Haller is in first year of Law School at USC and Maddie Bosch has started at the LAPD Police Academy.

Sources for the Above “About the Author“:

Excellent Resources for You

(1) Above CBS video. Recorded Nov 9, 2024.

(2) The “Mickey Haller Primer” also called “The Law of Innocence Primer” — I created this as an aid for the club readers — a PDF — CLICK HERE to open, view, and/or download it.

(3) PDF ARTICLE: “He Dreamed Up Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer. It All Started With L.A.,” The New York Times, Published March 15, 2025, Updated March 17, 2025, 9:54 a.m. ET, by Elisabeth Egan. Thanks to Selena for noticing and forwarding the article link. CLICK HERE to open, view, and/or download it.

Here is how our thirteen readers reacted. No score lower than 90!! An average score of 94 – the highest ever in 8 years of keeping records.

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