Michael Connelly

Use these questions to help start a conversation about the book. SPOILER WARNING! These questions cover the entire book. Don’t read them unless you have read the book.

The foreclosure epidemic was the country’s biggest ongoing financial catastrophe.
1. The foreclosure aspects of this story are truly ripped from the headlines. Do you think crime novels are a great platform to shine a light on real world issues?

What I’m about to tell you now is the most important piece of advice in the world.
2. Do you think that a defense attorney’s advice to not talk about a case with anyone goes against an innocent person’s natural desire to clear their name? Could you remain quiet? Do you think only guilty people ask for a lawyer?

I believed that with strangers, Lisa Trammel was very skilled at keeping her personal and emotional issues beneath the surface.
3. Did you like Lisa Trammel? Was she a sympathetic character? Did you think she was guilty or innocent? Could you defend a client that you despised?

My mission was to know all I could and yet there were things I didn’t want to know right now.
4. This book gives insight into a defense attorney’s job preparing and running a case. Mickey says, “Sometimes knowing things limits you. Not knowing them gives you more latitude in crafting a defense.” Did viewing a defense prep change your view of the justice system? Are you more sympathetic to the defense side now?

The prosecution is always the home team.
5. Did you think Andrea Freeman played fair as the prosecutor? Was she wrong to hide her friendship with Maggie McPherson? Do you think Mickey played dirty?

For me it was four decades of confidence and self-esteem shattered like small bones on the pavement.
6. How did you feel about the way Mickey and Cisco handled the two men who beat him up? Cisco said Mickey needed to confront them to get his manhood back. Do you understand what he meant? Do you agree? Do you feel differently about Cisco now because of the violence?

Bosch remained as distant as ever and I remained as saddened about it as ever.
7. It would seem that Mickey wants a relationship with Harry Bosch, his half brother, that Harry is not prepared to give. Do you expect Harry to change and embrace family life with Mickey? Did Mickey seem lonely in this book?

I just wish there was a way to make you and Hayley proud of me.
8. What do you think of Mickey’s decision at the end of the book regarding his career? Was he doing this to prove something to Maggie or to himself? What do you hope will happen in the next Mickey Haller story?

Interview

In The Fifth Witness, there is a scene with Mickey Haller sitting in the backseat of the Lincoln listening to “Judgement Day” off the latest Eric Clapton album. Scroll down the page to listen to a conversation between Michael Connelly and Eric Clapton.

Clapton & Me

I first heard the sound of Eric Clapton’s guitar in a friend’s garage in 1969. It was the only place we were allowed to turn it up loud. Needless to say, I’ve been a fan ever since. I’ve tracked his career, read his autobiography, watched him play live and listened to his recordings it seems for all of my life.

As a writer, music is important to me. It is routine for me to place the music I am listening to and care about in my books. Harry Bosch’s taste in jazz comes from me. Cassie Black’s love of Lucinda Williams was inspired by my love of Lucinda Williams. And Mickey Haller’s musical interests that wander from Tupac Shakur to Ry Cooder and everywhere in between once again come from me.

It doesn’t matter to me that a musical reference on a written page cannot impart the audible journey to the reader. I was on the journey when I wrote that page and that is what matters most. I had to listen to that music to write that page. And if the reader gets something from the reference, if it helps the reading experience or plants a musical suggestion, then that is just icing on the cake.

So with all of that in background, it was one of best moments of my writing life when three years ago I received a message purportedly from Eric Clapton and delivered through this website. It simply said, “Tell Mr. Connelly I appreciate the mention in the new book.”

I have to admit I was tantalized. Could it be him? Could it be the real Eric Clapton? The Eric Clapton of Cream, Blind Faith, and Derek and the Dominoes? The man who sang “Bell Bottom Blues” and “Layla” and “Wonderful Tonight”?

I wrote back, cautiously. On guard in case I was being victimized by an imposter or a prankster. It led to a tentative email relationship and then a friendship.  In The Fifth Witness, Mickey Haller listens to Clapton. Not just Eric Clapton but Clapton, the new album. In particular he’s listening to “Judgement Day” when in effect it is a judgment day in the story.

I hope you enjoy my interview with Eric that took place recently at a Los Angeles recording studio. I hope it helps you enjoy riding with Mickey Haller through the book. I’ve been riding with Eric Clapton’s music for forty-two years. Maybe your journey has just begun.
— Michael Connelly

**The download song offer has expired.**

The Fifth Witness audiobook by Hachette Audio is read by narrator Peter Giles. It is available in CD and in downloadable formats.

Listen to an excerpt:

Question: Michael, in The Fifth Witness, we learn that times have been tough for criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller causing him to expand his law practice into foreclosure defense. One of his foreclosure clients gets accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to take her home. Why did you decide to tackle the tricky subject of foreclosure in this book?
Michael Connelly: Two reasons. First, I am always looking for a story that reflects a little bit of what is happening in society at the moment. And this, of course, is happening. Millions of homes have been foreclosed on in the last couple years and probably millions more to come. The second reason is that I sort of fell into it. One of the attorney’s I research the Haller books with has done the same thing. Because the economic downturn has resulted in fewer clients being able to hire private defense counsel, he moved into foreclosure defense. He told me some stories about this side of the legal trade and I knew there was a story there.

Q: Here is a Mickey quote from the book: “When you come from the criminal defense bar, you are used to being despised.” Do you find it hard to create and maintain a series character who works in a profession that some people just don’t understand and often find sleazy?
MC: Absolutely. But it’s a two-sided coin. On one side there are readers who love watching a guy who is good at gaming the system. On the other, there are readers looking for a hero. So the difficulty is finding stories and situations where Mickey sort of speaks to both of these constituencies. Reading to me is about creating an empathic connection with a character. The challenge in accomplishing this as a writer is more difficult when that character, as you say, is often misunderstood and generalized as sleazy. It is so much easier to build a connection between the reader and a detective like Harry Bosch.

Q: In The Fifth Witness, Mickey says: “It doesn’t matter if our clients are guilty or innocent. They all get the same bang for their buck.” In the book, Mickey’s new young associate questions this philosophy and Mickey has to educate her about the reality of criminal defense. Was this your way of explaining and supporting Mickey’s work with your readers?
MC: I definitely set up the character of Jennifer Aronson as the conscience of the story. She is young and idealistic. Mickey has been down the road a long way and his idealism has been eroded with cynicism. Jennifer is there to remind him of the way things should be. In a way she is a device I use for Mickey to explain himself and his world.

Q: You really seem to nail not only the courtroom scenes but the demanding work that goes into preparing for a murder trial.  Since you don’t have a law background, how do you pull this off? And what kind of feedback do you get from lawyers about these books?
MC: I ask a lot of questions. I used to be a newspaper reporter and covered courts for a while. It gave me a basic understanding of procedure. But I spend a lot of time with lawyers and cops and I try to get it as right as possible. Overall, the reaction is very good from people in the law trade. But not everything is exacting in the law. I frequently hear from lawyers who say they would go different ways or employ other means. It doesn’t mean I got it wrong. There are just different ways within the law to get from A to B.

Q: When we first met Mickey Haller in The Lincoln Lawyer, he was working alone on small time cases out of the back seat of his car. In the most recent book, The Reversal, Mickey temporarily switched sides and acted as a special prosecutor. In The Fifth Witness, he is back to defense work but he has hired an associate fresh out of law school and gets a temporary office. It would seem that things are always changing for Mickey.  Why do you prefer to evolve your characters book-to-book? 
MC: It’s the only way to keep him alive. Characters can’t be static from book to book. I always want to change things up. In fact, at the end of The Fifth Witness there is another change and Mickey’s off in a new direction I hope to explore the next time I write about him.

Q: Did the experience of seeing your Mickey Haller character brought to life on film by Matthew McConaughey (The Lincoln Lawyer, in theaters March 18, 2011) change the experience of writing him?
MC: Not really. I think McConaughey is excellent as Mickey Haller but I think his character is imbedded pretty deeply in my imagination so I can still write him without distraction.

Q: So, what is coming next, after The Fifth Witness?
MC: I’m having a busy year and I am currently writing a book called The Drop, which is a Harry Bosch novel. Harry is handling two cases at once, a cold case that turns hot, and the politically charged investigation into the death of a city councilman’s son. The city councilman happens to be Harry’s old nemesis, Irvin Irving. I hope to get the book finished in time to be published this fall.

Michael Connelly introduces his novel, The Fifth Witness.

“Crime-fiction megastar Connelly can always be counted on to try something a little different. In The Reversal (2010), his last Mickey Haller novel, starring the L.A. lawyer who prefers to work out of his Lincoln Town Car, Connelly offered a tour de force of plotting on multiple levels. Here, he narrows the focus considerably, concentrating almost exclusively on what happens inside the courtroom but bringing to the traditional give-and-take of prosecutor, defender, judge, and jury an altogether more complex commingling of personality and legal strategy than is typically on view in legal thrillers. He accomplishes this with a particularly rich first-person narration in which Haller takes us through the courtroom drama as it happens, noting his blunders and praising himself for quick-thinking improvisations. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the plot is meaty: a woman whom Haller was representing in a suit against the bank attempting to foreclose on her mortgage is accused of killing the bank official in charge of foreclosures. Combining ripped-from-the-headlines information on the mortgage crisis with a cast of characters that defies stereotypes at every turn of the plot, Connelly shows once again that he will never simply ride the wave of past success. And, neither, apparently, will Mickey Haller, as he reveals a shocking change of direction in the novel’s final pages.”
— Bill Ott, Booklist * Starred Review

“Connelly’s compelling fourth legal thriller featuring Mickey Haller finds the maverick L.A. lawyer who uses his Lincoln town car as an office specializing in “foreclosure defense.” Haller’s first foreclosure client, Lisa Trammel, is fighting hard to keep her home, maybe too hard. The bank has gotten a restraining order to stop Trammel’s protests, and she becomes the prime suspect when Mitchell Bondurant, a mortgage banker, is killed with a hammer in his office parking lot. A ton of evidence points to Trammel, but Haller crafts an impressive defense that includes “the fifth witness” of the title. Connelly has a sure command of the legal and procedural details of criminal court, and even manages to make the arcane, shady world of foreclosure interesting. While the prose may lack some of the poetic nuance of his early novels, the plot is worthy of a master storyteller. The film of The Lincoln Lawyer, the first Mickey Haller novel, releases in March.”
— Publishers Weekly, * Starred Review

In this up-to-the-minute thriller, criminal defense attorney Haller has taken on foreclosure work, which creates complications: one of his clients is accused of killing the banker threatening to foreclose on her home. Buy multiples.”
— Library Journal

“About half the novel deals with the murder trial itself, and it’s here that Connelly excels, easily surpassing even John Grisham in the building of courtroom suspense. It’s clear that Connelly just loves this stuff. …The idea that Connelly is very good comes as no surprise, but the consistency of his excellence is remarkable, given that he’s publishing two books a year right now. I picked up “The Fifth Witness” one night last week, intending just to get a feel for the story, and found I couldn’t put it down until I’d finished it more than five hours later.”
— Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times

“Mickey Haller’s legal business has been hit hard by the recession, but he’s decided to turn lemons into lemonade by coming to the aid of foreclosure victims. One of his very first cases backfires, however, when soon-to-be disposed teacher Lisa Trammel emerges as the foremost suspect in a homicide case. Applying all his legal and investigatory skills, Haller turns a prosecution slam-dunk into something far more interesting. Keyed with suspense and last minute surprises, Michael Connelly’s latest courtroom procedural will keep you reading and guessing to the end. Editor’s recommendation.”
— Barnes & Noble Editorial Review

“Just in time for his movie debut this spring, Connelly brings back the Lincoln Lawyer for a satisfying case that pits him against a real-estate foreclosure mill. …the courtroom scenes—thrust, parry, struggle for every possible advantage—are grueling enough for the most exacting connoisseur of legal intrigue.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Connelly is himself a master manipulator, and there’s always something deadly serious behind his entertaining courtroom high jinks. Here he describes the background of the real estate collapse, exposing the venality involved in mortgage foreclosures. And just to keep it light, he throws in a few inside jokes about Hollywood hustlers and the things they’ll do to get their hands on a hot property.”
— Marilyn Stasio, New York Times

“This is Connelly at his thought-provoking best.”
— People Magazine, 4 stars

“The Fifth Witness deftly shows us the workings of a justice system fraught with peril inside and outside the courtroom. It’s a battlefield, so Haller can be excused for taking a Donald Rumsfeldian view of his job: “There are three things for the lawyer to always consider,” he reflects. “The knowns, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns.” By the time this twist-filled legal ride is done, the parties involved have confronted the known and unknown alike.”
— Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal

“I’ve said many times that Connelly continues to show why he is one of the best – and most consistent – living crime writers. “The Fifth Witness” adds evidence to the case.”
— Oline Cogdill, Sun-Sentinel

“Michael Connelly sure can write em. His latest, The Fifth Witness, is a court procedural. This means there are many chapters where an attorney is asking a witness questions. Most of the time this makes for a tedious read and a boring thriller. Michael Connelly creates a mystery as satisfying as the other Mickey Haller and Bosch mystery novels. …The Fifth Witness is yet another Connelly page-turner.”
— Richard Lanoie, The Mystery Site

“The book is a legal thriller to end all legal thrillers. I didn’t see the twists and turns coming at me, and was hard pressed to put the book down to sleep. I didn’t want it to end, a sure sign of a winning book.”
— Maggie Mason, Deadly Pleasures Magazine

“When you’re at the top of your game, millions of readers await your next book with anticipation, reviewers are ready to scratch at your reputation if you so much as offer a less than excellent story. As the saying goes “It’s tougher to stay at the top than it is to reach it”. With The Fifth Witness, Connelly need not worry; he can keep his throne for a while longer; and his reputation very much intact too. This is one of his most complete books in every aspect; his prose is meticulous, as sharp as a scalpel, and he keeps every thread of the story tightly knit together – like expertly done stitches. As usual for Connelly, no detail is unnecessary; he’s not there to try to fool the reader, he just wants to tell a story. One that will grip the reader right from the start, when we find Mickey Haller in his ‘office’ (his bulletproof Lincoln Town Car) up until the finale, when some earlier details end up revealing the truth, the whole truth, and a bit more than that for the defense lawyer.”
— Jacques Filippi, House of Crime and Mystery

I can’t remember the last time I breezed through a weighty hardback with such speed. Nor can I remember when the content of such a tome felt so light and pleasing. …The author, a master of pace, carefully places each new nugget of information as it pops into view on the horizon. It’s this trickle of facts that keeps the pages turning and with every new revelation it becomes harder and harder to stop reading. Do yourself a favour set aside a good chunk of time and digest the whole thing in one go. Then at least you won’t suffer the craving for more.”
— John Massey, Wharf.co.uk

“Plot and judicial gymnastics are the focus here, making “The Fifth Witness” an easy, amiable read with a tang of venom for zest.”
— Katherine Dunn, Oregonian

“Mickey Haller is an irresistible character: smart, cynical, funny and always with a trick up his sleeve. Connelly, a former crime reporter, knows how to keep a story moving and give us characters to love and hate.”
— Salem Macknee, Charlotte Observer

“Readers who love a good down-and-dirty courtroom battle will love this superb new novel featuring Mickey Haller.”
— Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail

“I just couldn’t put it down as the twists kept coming right to the end. His best – until the next one!”
— Alex Gordon, Peterborough Evening Telegraph (UK)

“The greatest living American crime writer has landed another telling blow to his nearest rivals. The Fifth Witness is criminal defence attorney Mickey Haller’s strongest and most pertinent performance yet.”
— The Mirror (UK)

“With The Fifth Witness, Connelly delivers his best Lincoln Lawyer to date, dissecting Mickey Haller’s emotions between family and overzealous courtroom antics. The verdict: a sucker punch finale with an interesting future for our anti-hero.”
— JC Patterson, Rankin Ledger

“Connelly is a master at knowing when to shift focus. He knows when to put his foot on the gas and when to take it off. Once Connelly has you on board, turning the pages, you won’t want to climb off. As popular entertainment goes, it doesn’t get much better than this.”
— Chuck Leddy, Boston Globe

“The Fifth Witness by best-selling author Michael Connelly is another masterpiece by one of America’s best crime fiction novelists.”
— Ray Walsh, Lansing State Journal

“Superb storytelling, corkscrew twists and a killer finale. Rush out and buy it – you won’t regret it for a moment.”
— Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail UK

“As ever, Connelly makes Mickey the perfect conduit through the hazardous jungles of LA courtrooms and low-rent neighbourhoods. But the social underpinnings here are what really engage the author: The Fifth Witness will not be comfortable reading for bankers, but neither is it indulgent towards those who feel that the world owes them a house and a living. Mickey may champion the latter, but he knows that most of his clients will end up on the scrapheap. This is as diverting an outing for Connelly’s hero as we have been granted.”
— Barry Forshaw, The Indepedent UK

“Connelly demonstrates his versatility here. His latest legal thriller, replete with authentic characters and compelling dialogue, provides a fascinating glimpse of our justice system in action that’s sure to entertain.”
— Robert Wade, San Diego Union-Tribune