The Law of Innocence is a 2020 novel by Michael Connelly.
It stars Connelly's second most-frequent protagonist, defense lawyer Mickey Haller. At the opening of the story Haller is leaving a congratulatory dinner (he won an acquittal) when he's pulled over by a cop for not having a license plate. Haller is thinking that someone has pulled a prank on him when a liquid starts dripping from the trunk. The cop opens the trunk and finds a dead body inside.
The corpse is Sam Scales, a con artist specializing in fake charities that Haller had defended before. Suddenly Mickey is in prison, facing first-degree murder charges and a life sentence. Haller, acting as his own attorney, is facing the fight of his life, in fact a fight for his life. He does at least have the help of the rest of his law firm, his ex-wife Maggie McPherson, and, as an investigator, his half-brother Harry Bosch.
Sixth Mickey Haller novel, coming seven years after The Gods of Guilt.
Tropes:
- Amicable Exes: Mickey's ex-wife Maggie goes on leave from the DA's office to represent Mickey at his trial.
- Anticlimax: The big murder trial doesn't end with The Reveal like The Fifth Witness did or a violent climax like all the other Mickey Haller novels have. In this one the FBI, faced with the possibility of Mickey eliciting testimony that might embarrass them and compromise their investigation, simply makes the state drop the charges. Mickey is proclaimed innocent and goes home. (There is however a violent denoument in the last chapter.)
- Bluff the Eavesdropper: In one scene Mickey decides to test whether or not the guards are listening to his prison phone calls, by having a fake conversation with Jennifer about fleeing to Baja. When the prosecutor brings this up in court, Mickey nails her.
- Clear My Name: Mickey has to do this for himself, which raises the stakes just a little bit.
- Continuity Nod: Many, a lot even for Connelly who always has these in his books. Possibly because it's the first Mickey Haller novel since 2013 and The Gods of Guilt.
- Mickey remembers that he once nearly had a client get convicted because a jailhouse snitch got a look at the client's files. That was in The Lincoln Lawyer.
- Sam Scales, a con artist and former Haller client who pops up in three Haller novels, is the murder victim in this one.
- Harry Bosch's leukemia diagnosis, touched on in The Night Fire, is mentioned again. Mickey won Harry a million-dollar judgment from the city (Harry was exposed to radioactive material in The Overlook) but didn't take a cut as Harry will need the money for doctor bills. Harry is on medication and is doing well enough for now that he's able to take Mickey's case.
- Andre LaCosse, the innocent man that Mickey got off in The Gods of Guilt, helps pay for Mickey's defense.
- Louis Opparizio, the mobbed-up real estate developer whom Mickey set up as a "straw man" in The Fifth Witness, comes back in a big way, as it turns out he is the one who had Sam Scales killed. Ditto Lisa Trammel, Mickey's client in that novel, who volunteers to testify against Mickey in hopes of revenge.
- Downer Beginning: Getting arrested for murder is a major downer.
- A Fool for a Client: Mickey says "maybe I did have a fool for a client" but still feels like he has to handle his own defense. He does at least get his law partner Jennifer Aronson, and later his ex-wife Maggie McPherson, to sit alongside him.
- Generation Xerox: This novel reveals that Mickey's daughter Hayley is going to law school, while Harry Bosch's daughter Madeline has enrolled in the police academy.
- Hollywood Silencer: Averted. "So-called silencers" are discussed at length, with the prosecution in Mickey's trial even making a point of explaining how silencers aren't really that silent (thus suggesting that if Mickey didn't kill Scales, he should have heard the shots).
- I Was Never Here: When Agent Ruth of the FBI finally explains what went down with the Sam Scales murder, she starts off by saying, "First of all, this conversation didn't happen."
- Knuckle Tattoos: Bishop the drug dealer, whom Mickey has hired as a bodyguard in jail, has "CRIP LIFE" tattooed across his knuckles.
- Lecture as Exposition: Kendall asks a question about the "speedy trial" rule in California. Mickey tells his daughter Hayley that she's a law student, so she can answer, and so Hayley explains to Kendall and the readers about speedy trials in California.
- Literal Metaphor: Mickey is in lock-up facing a very pissed convict when the alarm for bed check sounds. He reflects that he "was literally saved by the bell."
- Post-Climax Confrontation: The main story is resolved when the FBI, to avoid having one of their agents testify about their investigation, gets the state of California to drop the charges and proclaim Mickey innocent. He walks out of jail a free man. Then in the last chapter, as Mickey is scrounging for groceries in March 2020 as coronavirus panic is peaking, the mob killer who murdered Sam Scales pops up out of nowhere and tries to kill Mickey.
- Punk in the Trunk: Mickey is unpleasantly surprised when a cop finds the dead body of Sam Scales in the trunk of Mickey's car.
- Title Drop: To Mickey, "the law of innocence is unwritten." The idea is that if a person is not guilty of a crime then someone else is, so Mickey has to go find that person.
- 20 Minutes into the Past: This book published in November 2020 is set from October 2019 to March of 2020. The unfolding of the COVID-19 Pandemic is a running theme in the background of the book's plot, starting with Mickey hearing news reports of a weird virus in China and ending in the last chapter with Mickey scouring a grocery store for whatever he can get during the pandemic's panic-buying phase.
- Vanity License Plate: Mickey's "IWALKEM" and "NT GLTY" vanity plates have been mentioned repeatedly throughout the Mickey Haller novels. The last paragraph of this one has him looking at his "NT GLTY" plate and contemplating how it's "announcing my fate and my standing to the world."
