Michael Connelly’s latest thriller, The Fifth Witness, the fourth of his Mickey Haller titles, comes on the heels of the film adaptation of the first, The Lincoln Lawyer starring Matthew McConaughey (fully clothed) as the slick defense attorney, and while the books bearing Connelly’s trusted name are a popular series, (the guy could write best-selling appliance manuals, let’s be honest), the film has not quite set the world on fire the way I was kinda assuming it would, despite Connelly’s reputation and a really solid cast.
I’ve got a theory about that.
Seems to me, seems to me (what do you think, I fact check all these half-cracked notions? Think again, sweetheart, it’s late, I’ve had a couple, this is some by the seat of my pants supposing going on here, but bear with me)… It seems to me that say fifty years ago you were much more likely to find a heroic treatment of a defense attorney than now. It seems to me that Perry Mason and Atticus Finch were standing up for the little guy put on the spot by the big, bad system that’d been set against him since he was born. It seems to me that that struck a pretty strong chord in the public consciousness. Whereas today, it seems to me, the defense attorney usually cues the hiss in the audience. We love to hate them, these defenders of the scum-bags who prey on us.
It seems to me that today if you want a heroic lawyer, nine times outta ten, it’s gonna be a prosecutor taking aim at somebody that thinks they can get away with it, somebody who thinks the law doesn’t apply to them and perhaps most importantly, somebody who can afford to hire the very best sleazy lawyer to ensure that their perverse sense of entitlement is reflected by the system that seems to have been built to work for them. Check out the prime-time legal dramas and best-selling legal thrillers (Marcia Clark anyone?) Does my casual observation hold up? Now, what do you think that might say about us? I cast no aspersions here, I’m part of that majority, but I do wonder what it may reveal about my world-view.
If anybody can pull off a popular and heroic defense lawyer, my money’s on Connelly. Couple him with a timely story, (Mickey defending people evicted from their homes) and jeez, McConaughey too (he did it once already in Joel Schumacher’s adaptation of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, yeah?) Hey, Matt if it’s no coincidence, maybe you could go for the triple-crown and get a production of George V. Higgins’ Kennedy for the Defense under way… Ooh, and make it a period film, yeah! Too bad Peter Yates just passed away, ‘cause his take on Higgins – The Friends of Eddie Coyle - was friggin sweet.
Speaking of non-sequiturs , Christopher Goffard’s ridiculously awesome novel Snitch Jacket has one of the best snitches this side of Eddie Coyle and also features my favorite defense attorney character in an age. What? You haven’t read it? Quit hanging around here and hop-to, slacker. It’s only one of the best crime debuts of the last ten years and y’know what, Mr. Goffard’s got a new book coming in December. You’ll wanna be able to say you were reading him long before everybody hopped on that wagon, (though I understand the new one - You Will See Fire - bears little resemblance in style or subject matter to Snitch Jacket).
So, am I just pleasantly buzzed and waaaaay off on the whole defense/prosecuting attorney thing refracting the sea-change in public consciousness? Set me straight and pass the High Life.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
