The Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey Haller)

About The Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey Haller)

Mickey Haller is a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who works out of the back seat of a chauffeured Lincoln Town Car, hustling between courthouses from Van Nuys to Compton. The son of a famous defense lawyer he barely knew — and half-brother, as the series reveals, of LAPD detective Harry Bosch — Haller is a self-described legal gunslinger: cynical about the system, devoted to working its angles, and haunted by the defense attorney's nightmare of failing to recognize a truly innocent client. Around him Michael Connelly assembles a repertory cast: case manager (and first ex-wife) Lorna, investigator Cisco, prosecutor and second ex-wife Maggie "McFierce" McPherson, driver-turned-associate Izzy, and daughter Hayley.

The Lincoln Lawyer (2005) — filmed with Matthew McConaughey and reborn as a hit Netflix series — set the template: a lucrative "franchise" client whose case turns lethal, courtroom sequences of chess-match precision, and a moral reckoning underneath the showmanship. The sequels push Haller everywhere a defense lawyer can go: prosecuting for once in The Reversal, defending himself from a jail cell in The Law of Innocence, working innocence-project exonerations with Bosch in Resurrection Walk, and, in The Proving Ground (2025), taking a landmark civil case against an artificial-intelligence company. Alongside the Bosch books, the Haller series forms the courtroom half of Connelly's interlocked Los Angeles — and some of the best legal thrillers written this century.

How to read this series

Publication order, starting with The Lincoln Lawyer: story order and publication order match, and Haller's shifting marriages, partnerships and reputation build book to book. The eight Haller-led novels stand well alone, though — each case is complete — so joining at a later entry works if you accept mild personal-life spoilers.

The series is deeply threaded into the Harry Bosch universe. The Brass Verdict (book 2) is where Haller and Bosch discover they are half-brothers; after that, the pair share cases in both directions. For the complete Haller experience, add the Bosch novels where he co-stars — The Crossing (2015), The Wrong Side of Goodbye (2016), The Night Fire (2019) and Desert Star (2022) — slotted by publication year. Netflix viewers can start the books anywhere: the show adapts books 2-5, but the novels' timeline and cast details differ.