WHEELS OF JUSTICE

chael Connelly made his name by creating the jazz-loving, grudge-bearing L.A. cop Harry Bosch, but his more entertaining handiwork is Mickey Haller, the criminaldefense attorney with a best friend named Patron Silver and whose mobile office got him (and Matthew McConaughey, in a movie almost as good as the book) dubbed the "Lincoln Lawyer." Ford may have stopped making the Lincoln Town Car, but the Haller line is still in production. The Gods of Guilt (Little, Brown) marks Haller's fifth starring role and the darkest yet, what with his defending a pimp who pays in gold bars and accepting protection from a Mexican drug prince with a fiery temper (and the charred bodies to prove it). The novel is Haller's nickname not just for the 12 citizens who sit in judgment in the courtroom, but for those he has loved and is forever pleading with for his redemption. In his world, that jury is always out.

JIM KELLY