A review by trukkos_travisz
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

Unless you like boilerplate lawyer-detective stories and can ignore bad writing, there's not much to like, except that it's exceedingly easy to read. Dialogues are stilted; the characters are one-dimensional (half the role of two of the three women in the book is basically just to exist as the main character's ex-wives; the role of the other is to exist as the defendant's mother), caricatured (the lawyer is an objective asshole without morality but everyone likes him [except the police, because he's—of course—just so damn good at his job], and yet he has absolutely no personality) and inconsistent (the thought that he didn't successfully defend an innocent man shatters him, but he has no compunctions about continuing his job completely as normal at the end of the book; more strikingly, one character goes from upstanding to completely evil from one chapter to the next); and the writing is juvenile (I can't count the number of times that the sentence after a quote redescribes exactly what had been said, and the sentence structure doesn't vary one whit throughout the entire book—the rhythm of the book was the linguistic equivalent of a metronome: steady, I suppose, but entirely uninteresting).

The cover of my copy of this book had a quote that this is one of the best books Michael Connelly has written. It seems this must be an insult to the author rather than a compliment.