** spoiler alert ** Let me preface this by saying I much prefer police procedural to legal thrillers, so the fact that Connelly can even get me to read a courtroom drama is pretty damn good. I'll always favor Harry Bosch, homicide detective and one of my all time favorite characters, but I have to admit that Haller is winning me over. That's a testament to some mighty fine writing skills. Connelly is one of those rare master story tellers who keeps you reading even when you might not actually like some of the details and I always look forward to his work.

With the economy in the dumpster, Haller's legal business has taken to doing foreclosure cases. He's not making a lot of money, but it's a quantity vs. quality situation. Then one of his foreclosure clients gets accused of killing a banker who was taking her house in what was turning out to be a major fraud case. She soon becomes an icon for the movement to blame bankers for the whole housing market mess.

I have to say it takes a lot of talent to make the mortgage crisis interesting and to keep me reading when the client in the book is so thoroughly unlikeable. But I did keep reading and Haller's defense is brilliant.

Like all Connelly's books, nothing is really what it seems, so it's a twisty way to the finish line. It should be interesting how Connelly handles the next book since at the end Haller is switching sides from the defense to prosecution.

It's a good book and I'm liking Haller a lot more than I did. However, while I know he'd be good at putting scumbags away instead of getting them off, I don't know how well he'll deal with the politics. Looking forward to it.