Best known for his Heironymous “Harry” Bosch series of books (The Closers, Trunk Music, The Narrows, The Black Echo, The Black Ice, The Concrete Blonde) Michael Connelly dips his toes into legal thriller waters with The Lincoln Lawyer.

The aptly fitting title revolves around criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller, who works out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car. Haller gets a call from Fernando Valenzuela (no, not the baseball pitcher, but a bondsman) about a case that could be a “franchise” – in other words, a big money case involving a rich playboy -- Louis Ross Roulet from the Hollywood Hills. Once Haller gets Roulet out of jail, he interviews him and gets a funny feeling about the story Louis is giving him.

’She opened the door a crack, saw it was me and told me to come in. There was a hallway by the front door so it was kind of a tight space. I walked by her so she could close the door. She hit me with something and I went down. It got black real fast.’

‘So before a single thing happened, she just knocked you out? She didn’t say anything, yell anything, just sort of came up behind and bang.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Okay, then what?’

‘It’s still pretty foggy. I remember waking up and these two guys are sitting on me. Holding me down. And then the police came.’

‘You were still in the apartment?’

‘Yeah. I saw that they had my hand in a plastic bag and I could see blood on my hand, and that’s when I knew who whole thing was a set up.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘She put blood on my hand to make it look like I did it. But it was my left hand. I’m not left handed. If I was going to punch somebody, I’d use my right hand.’

He made a punching gesture with his right hand to illustrate this for me in case I didn’t get it. I got up from my spot and paced over to the window. It now seemed like I was higher than the sun. I was looking down at the sunset. I felt uneasy about Roulet’s story. It seemed so far- fetched that it might actually be true. And that bothered me. I was always worried that I might not recognize innocence.