The Fire in Fiction Read Online Free PDF

one's readers. What's the best balance? And which comes first, the strength or the humility? It doesn't matter. What's important is that one is quickly followed by the other.
    Michael Connelly is one of our most popular crime fiction writers, thanks largely to his passionate and all-too-human LAPD detective Harry Bosch. In The Brass Verdict (2008), Connelly brings together Bosch and his half-brother (introduced in The Lincoln Lawyer, 2005), defense attorney Mickey Haller.
    Connelly opens The Brass Verdict with a sequence that establishes Mickey's creds as a tough defense attorney. In the trial of a drug dealer accused of killing two college students, Mickey seizes upon a fatal lie told by the chief witness for the prosecution, a jailhouse snitch. He rips open the prosecution's case. Assistant district attorney Jerry Vincent offers a more lenient sentence, but Mickey's loathsome client wants to roll the dice. Mickey gets him acquitted.
    Jerry Vincent is ruined. Zip up to the present day. Connelly knows that although Mickey showed strength in doing his job, morally he was wrong. He set a vicious killer free. If we are to cheer for Mickey now, the moral balance must be leveled. So, we learn that in subsequent years, Jerry Vincent prospered as a celebrity defender in private practice. Jerry even thanked Mickey for showing him the light.
    That, though, is not enough to put Mickey Haller on the right side of the ethical line. Mickey must pay a price for his too-dogged defense of a killer, and so Connelly punishes him. Mickey goes out of action for a year for reasons he explains to administrative judge Mary Townes Holder when she summons him to announce that he has inherited the law practice and lucrative open cases of the recently murdered Jerry Vincent:
    "Judge, I had a case a couple years ago. The client's name was Louis Roulet. He was—"
    "I remember the case, Mr. Haller. You got shot. But, as you say, that was a couple years ago. I seem to remember you practicing law for some time after that. I remember the news stories about you coming back to the job."
    "Well," I said, "what happened is that I came back too soon. I had been gut shot, Judge, and I should've taken my time. Instead, I hurried back and the next thing I knew I started having pain and the doctors said I had a hernia. So I had an operation for that and there were complications. They did it wrong. There was even more pain and another operation and, well, to make a long story short, it knocked me down for a while. I decided the second time not to come back until I was sure I was ready."
    The judge nodded sympathetically. I guessed I had been right to leave out the part about my addiction to pain pills and the stint in rehab.
    "Money wasn't an issue," I said. "I had some savings and I also got a settlement from the insurance company. So I took my time coming back. But I'm ready. I was just about to take the back cover of the Yellow Pages."
    "Then, I guess inheriting an entire practice is quite convenient, isn't it?" she said.
    I didn't know what to say to her question or the smarmy tone in which she said it.
    "All I can tell you, Judge, is that I would take good care of Jerry Vincent's clients."
    Notice several things about this exchange. The once-arrogant Mickey is now humbled. His tone with Judge Holder is level and respectful. The judge has the power to deny Mickey the cases Jerry Vincent left behind, but it is more than that. Mickey is on shaky ground. He knows it. He is not in a position to demand, but neither does he beg. He just presents the facts. Mickey is a wounded protagonist, quite literally, but Connelly does not overplay it. He instead moves Mickey beyond his angst to a place of dignity. No wallowing for Mickey Haller. As a result, he becomes a hero whose strength comes from his experience and from lessons learned.
    Even greater restraint can be observed in the return of Anne Perry's popular Victorian detective Thomas Pitt in Buckingham Palace Gardens