Review of The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly

The Fifth Witness

Michael Connelly

Little Brown and Company

ISBN 13:9780316069359

Mickey Haller is a defense attorney by trade but that doesn’t define him by any means, he’s served as a special prosecutor and now that the need for defense is way down in LA he’s decided to follow national trends of foreclosure law and play a modern day David keeping people in their homes against a Goliath bank or mortgage company. Business is brisk which is great for he and his associates and he even has some very deserving clients. One of his other kind of client the whiny, pain in the rump kind was just arrested for killing her Goliath banker so it’s back to Mickey Haller for the defense. The more he digs into this case the more murky the waters become and to get to the bottom of this he and his team will need to get their feet wet, and yet at every turn the prosecution seems to be one step ahead, but one thing Mickey never does is give up and he’ll go down swinging for his client. 

Michael Connelly is a master storyteller and a brilliant author. He can lead a reader to open a book and that reader will not put it down until the last page is finished. As with most of Mr. Connelly’s novels, this one is right up there in it’s timely and trendy content and is right off the headline newsreel. His narrative is also a stand out as he often discusses very meticulous legal issues and yet a layman will never feel the need to turn to a dictionary as he does an amazing job of explaining all technical and difficult terms in a language that is easily understood.  His characters are all rock star status as far as I’m concerned and in his Mickey Haller series that’s even more evident when Mickey’s two ex-wives are very much a part of his everyday life.

If you’ve never read Michael Connelly you can start with any novel, even within the series as they all make excellent stand a lones, but do yourself a favor and in the series go back and start from the beginning where you’ll learn all the history of the characters and their stories. No matter what you do, do read The Fifth Witness, not only for the fast paced action, not for the nail biting trial results, not even to find out what he and ex-wife number one are up to, read it for the explosive cliffhanger at the end of the book.

Mr. Connelly you have constantly surprised me, but this takes the cake. I can’t wait to see where Mickey goes from here.
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