I just finished The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly. It is another book in the Lincoln Lawyer series starring Mickey Haller a criminal defense attorney who, because of downturn in the economy, has switched to defending homeowners against fraudulent foreclosures in southern California.

Mr. Haller doesn’t have an office, he conducts his business in the back of a Lincoln. Mickey has a brand new associate right out of law school, an investigator, who is also a biker, and Maggie, an ex-wife with benefits, and I don’t mean a 401K.

One of his foreclosure clients is accused of the murder of a banker who held her mortgage. So Mickey has to put his foreclosure business on hold and get back in the courtroom. He goes up against a good friend of his ex-wife who happens to be an assistant DA.

This is one of the best books of the courtroom drama genre I have ever read. The trial goes this way and that way between exhilaration and despair as Mickey and the prosecutor hook it up and try and outwit and outmaneuver each  other in the courtroom ruled by “a judge with a grudge.”  The stakes on trial go up every day. There are no slow boring parts. It was literally a page turner. In fact I liked it so much that even though I had a library copy I bought it on my Kindle. There is nothing finer than reading a book on a Kindle (I imagine the other e-readers are similar.) You can just fly through a book.

I give this book a five out of five. I don’t give too many fives, so go to your library and get a copy.