Looking for a list of all the Lincoln Lawyer books in order? We’ve done all the hard work for you by detailing not only the Lincoln Lawyer books featuring Los Angeles attorney Mickey Haller, but also the numerous Harry Bosch series books in which Haller makes an appearance. Our list is for Lincoln Lawyer completionists – fans who want to not only read all the Lincoln Lawyer books, but also the Harry Bosch series books in which Mikey Haller appears.
Michael Connelly’s characters get around. When Mickey Haller (aka “The Lincoln Lawyer”) and Harry Bosch pop up in each other’s book series, it’s like catching your favorite singer doing a surprise duet.
As two strong personalities, the two don’t always see eye-to-eye, and the inevitable clash of personalities and ideologies makes for great reading (and for Audiobook fans, great listening). For proof, check out The Crossing, where Bosch switches sides for a change at Haller’s behest, but not without a lot of heartburn.
These inclusions add layers to the universe of Los Angeles crime and justice that Connelly has created throughout his catalog, creating multiple perspectives and points of view. As a bonus, both Haller and Bosch are foodies, and with both visiting real-life LA eateries, readers get a double-dose of must-visit restaurants to hit on your next trip to the city of Angels.
Before listing the Lincoln Lawyer books in order, we’ll give you some context on the nature of the relationship between Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch.
What’s the Relationship between Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer?
Warning: spoilers ahead!
Mickey Haller, a defense attorney who calls Los Angeles home and is known for working in the back of his Lincoln Town Car, just happens to be the younger paternal half-brother of Harry Bosch, the tough-as-nails LAPD homicide detective. Given that Bosch has devoted his life to catching criminals, and Haller has devoted his to keeping them out of jail, the pairing delivers a chasm they both strive to overcome. In books where they both appear together, they occasionally switch sides, which is one reason why any completionist needs to read the Lincoln Lawyer books in order as we suggest, inclusive of the Bosch (and in some cases the Ballard/Bosch) series.
Their father, Michael Haller Sr., was one of LA’s top criminal defense lawyers, rubbing elbows with the likes of mobster Mickey Cohen and a Manson family member. Harry Bosch’s biological mother is Marjorie Phillips Lowe, who was murdered when Harry was 11 years old. Mickey Haller’s mother is the product of Michael Haller Sr.’s second marriage. Haller’s mother was a much younger Mexican actress.
The pair discover shared lineage in Michael Connelly’s 2008 novel The Brass Verdict, in which Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller work together on a murder case. As the relationship evolves, their children – cousins Maddie Bosch and Hayley Haller – also develop a relationship.
Why Doesn’t Harry Bosch Appear in the Lincoln Lawyer TV Series, and Vice Versa?
Most viewers of the Bosch, Bosch Legacy and Lincoln Lawyer TV series likely have no idea that Bosch and Haller are actually related by birth. Since neither characters are even mentioned in either show, viewers who haven’t read the books also have no clue that they often find a way to collaborate professionally in the Connelly book universe.
The reason is simple: Connelly signed series based on each book series with different studios.
How likely is it that this changes in the future? In an interview with AARP, Connelly had this to say: “Since we have competing studios, that’s not going to be a thing in the shows. I understand. But if we got Amazon and Netflix working together, we could also solve world peace.”
This is a key reason why it’s important to read the Lincoln Lawyer books in order, but doing so in a way that takes the Bosch and Bosch/Ballard books into account as a key factor.
All the Lincoln Lawyer Books in Order Across Both Series
Here are all the Lincoln Lawyer books in order. Where possible, we note the Bosch series books in which Haller appears. We also note the Lincoln Lawyer books in which Harry Bosch appears. Books in the Renne Ballard series are also noted.
The Lincoln Lawyer (2005)
Lincoln Lawyer Series Book
Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn’t recognize innocence if it stood right in front of him.
But what he should have been on the watch for was evil.
Haller is the Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind—bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers.
For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence—it’s about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it’s even about justice.
A Beverly Hills playboy arrested for attacking a woman hires Haller, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years.
It is a defense attorney’s dream, and Haller starts to believe it is the easiest case of his career.
Then someone close to him is murdered and Haller finds that his search for innocence has brought him face-to-face with pure evil. Now he must deploy every tactic, feint, and instinct in his arsenal to walk away alive.
The Brass Verdict (2008)
Lincoln Lawyer Series Book featuring Harry Bosch
Things are finally looking up for defense attorney Mickey Haller.
After two years of wrong turns, Haller is back in the courtroom.
When Hollywood lawyer Jerry Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits his biggest case yet: defending Walter Elliott, a prominent studio executive accused of murdering his wife and her lover.
Elliott is far from an ideal human being. But is he guilty? And is he even telling Haller the truth?
But as Haller prepares for the case that could launch him into the big time, he learns that Vincent’s killer may be coming for him next.
Enter LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, who is determined to find Vincent’s killer.
As danger mounts and the stakes rise, these two loners realize their only choice is to work together.
And in the process, they’ll learn that they have far more in common than either realize.
Nine Dragons (2009)
Harry Bosch Series Book featuring Mickey Haller
For viewers of the Bosch TV series who have not read the book, doing so will be a eureka moment where you realize that everything you knew about the fate of Bosch’s ex-wife from the TV series is wrong.
The book also explains a lot about the Bosch/Maddie relationship that is key to the entire story.
As good as the TV series is, we’ll take this version of events as gospel, and it’s yet another reason anyone’s version of the Lincoln Lawyer books in order should be inclusive of the Bosch series.
LAPD Detective Harry Bosch is called to investigate the murder of a Chinese store owner in a tough LA neighborhood.
For Bosch, it’s a trip down memory lane to his days working the Asian Gangs Unit.
He quickly discovers that the murder could be linked to a Hong Kong triad, but as he delves deeper, he receives devastating personal news: his daughter, Maddie, who lives in Hong Kong with his ex-wife, is missing.
Bosch drops everything to search for her, navigating a foreign and perilous world.
With the help of his ex-wife and former lover, Eleanor Wish, Bosch faces the most terrifying adversary he has ever encountered. Along the way, he’ll tap the Lincoln Laywer for some clutch help.
The Reversal (2010)
Lincoln Lawyer Series Book featuring Harry Bosch
When DNA evidence frees a sadistic killer, defense attorney Mickey Haller and LAPD Detective Harry Bosch must put him behind bars before he strikes again.
Longtime defense attorney Mickey Haller is recruited to change sides and prosecute the high-profile retrial of a brutal child murder.
After 24 years in prison, convicted killer Jason Jessup has been exonerated by new DNA evidence.
Haller is convinced Jessup is guilty, and he takes the case on the condition that he gets to choose his investigator—LAPD Detective Harry Bosch.
Together, they set off on a case fraught with political and personal danger.
Together, Bosch and Haller set off on a case fraught with political and personal danger. Opposing them is Jessup, now out on bail, a defense attorney who excels at manipulating the media, and a runaway eyewitness reluctant to testify after so many years.
Opposing them is Jessup, who is out on bail and ready to kill again.
Will switching sides help Haller win the respect of his daughter, Hayley?
Will both Bosch and Haller survive to work together yet again?
The Fifth Witness (2011)
Lincoln Lawyer Series Book featuring Harry Bosch
The Fifth Witness is the basis for one of the best Lincoln Lawyer television series yet, and fans should read it to experience the story as it was actually intended.
Mickey Haller has fallen on tough times.
Criminal defense in recession-hit Los Angeles has dried up, and he’s been forced to expand into foreclosure defense, only to see one of his clients accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to take her home.
Meanwhile, Lisa Trammel had been a cause célèbre in the battle against foreclosure, and her arrest for murder brings her newfound attention and high-powered enemies.
Lisa is an attractive restauranteur, and there’s an undeniable romantic spark between her and Haller.
But what’s going on with her and a podcaster who wants to tell her story?
And why is she holding back key facts that could help him mount a defense?
Haller presents the best defense of his career, but as evidence stacks up, he faces the unsettling realization that he may be defending an indefensible client.
Fans should make sure to read this book, as they haven’t seen the last of Lisa in the series.
The Gods of Guilt (2013)
Lincoln Lawyer Series Book
Mickey Haller gets the text “Call me ASAP – 187,” and the California penal code for murder immediately gets his attention.
When defense attorney Haller learns that a former client, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow, has been murdered, he feels compelled to take the case.
Haller finds out that she was back in LA and back in the life.
Far from saving her, Haller may have been the one who put her in danger.
Haunted by the ghosts of past mistakes, Haller must work tirelessly to clear his own name and find the true killer.
This story offers insight into Haller’s heart, as he demonstrates the kind of loyalty that drives him — even when it’s clear he’s been mislead by someone he trusted.
Fans will enjoy comparing the televised version of this tale vs the original.
The Crossing (2015)
Harry Bosch Book featuring Mickey Haller
Despite the painfully obvious omission of the Lincoln Lawyer himself, The Crossing is the basis for a Bosch Legacy TV season. In terms of discovering how Connelley originally wrote the story, first-time readers of the book have a lot to look forward to.
Detective Harry Bosch has retired from the LAPD, but his half-brother, defense attorney Mickey Haller, needs his help.
A woman has been brutally murdered in her bed and all evidence points to Haller’s client, a former gang member turned family man. Though the murder rap seems ironclad, Mickey is sure it’s a setup.
Bosch doesn’t want anything to do with crossing the aisle to work for the defense.
He feels it will undo all the good he’s done in his thirty years as a homicide cop. But Mickey promises to let the chips fall where they may.
If Harry proves that his client did it, under the rules of discovery, they are obliged to turn over the evidence to the prosecution.
Though it goes against all his instincts, Bosch reluctantly takes the case.
The prosecution’s file just has too many holes and he has to find out for himself: if Haller’s client didn’t do it, then who did?
With the secret help of his former LAPD partner Lucy Soto, Harry starts digging. Soon his investigation leads him inside the police department, where he realizes that the killer he’s been tracking has also been tracking him.
The Wrong Side of Goodbye (2016)
Harry Bosch Book featuring Mickey Haller
While the basis for one of the best Bosch TV seasons, fans of the book may be put off by the cast and story differences between the book and the show. It may be the least faithful of any of Connolley’s screen adaptations, and yet, the results in both mediums are excellent.
Readers can look forward to an apeparance by the Lincoln Lawyer, Micky Haller.
Harry Bosch is California’s newest private investigator.
He doesn’t advertise, he doesn’t have an office, and he’s picky about his clients.
When a reclusive billionaire hires him to find a possible heir, Bosch is pulled into one of the most fraught and perilous cases of his career.
At the same time, as a volunteer reserve officer for the tiny San Fernando Police Department, he’s investigating a serial rapist known as the Screen Cutter.
Bosch finds himself juggling two cases, navigating between two worlds, and facing the past and present challenges that could threaten everything he holds dear.
Two Kinds of Truth (2017)
Harry Bosch Book featuring Mickey Haller
Fans of the TV series will be shocked by the character differences between the source material and the show. Readers can look forward to a significant contribution from Mickey Haller.
In the book version, Harry Bosch, exiled from the LAPD, is working cold cases for the San Fernando Police Department when all hands are called out to a local drugstore, where two pharmacists have been murdered in a robbery.
Bosch and the tiny town’s three-person detective squad sift through the clues, which lead into the dangerous, big-business world of prescription drug abuse.
To get to the people at the top, Bosch must risk everything and go undercover in the shadowy world of organized pill mills.
Meanwhile, an old case from Bosch’s days with the LAPD comes back to haunt him when a long-imprisoned killer claims Harry framed him and seems to have new evidence to prove it.
Bosch left the LAPD on bad terms, so his former colleagues are not keen on protecting his reputation. But if this conviction is overturned, every case Bosch ever worked will be called into question.
As usual, he must fend for himself as he tries to clear his name and keep a clever killer in prison.
The two cases wind around each other like strands of barbed wire.
Along the way, Bosch discovers that there are two kinds of truth: the kind that sets you free and the kind that leaves you buried in darkness.
The Night Fire (2019)
Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard Book featuring Mickey Haller
Back when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective, he had an inspiring mentor who taught him to take the work personally and light the fire of relentlessness for every case.
Now that mentor, John Jack Thompson, is dead, and his widow gives Bosch a murder book, one that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD twenty years before — the unsolved killing of a troubled young man.
Bosch takes the murder book to Detective Renée Ballard and asks her to help him discover what about this crime lit Thompson’s fire all those years ago.
As she begins her enquiries — while still working her own cases on the midnight shift — Ballad finds aspects of the initial investigation that just don’t add up.
The bond between Bosch and Ballard tightens as they become a formidable investigation team.
And they soon arrive at a disturbing question: did Thompson steal the murder book to work the case in retirement, or to make sure it never got solved?
The Laws of Innocence (2020)
Lincoln Lawyer Book featuring Harry Bosch
On the night he celebrates a big win, defense attorney Mickey Haller is pulled over by police, who find the body of a former client in the trunk of his Lincoln.
Haller is immediately charged with murder but can’t post the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge.
Mickey elects to represent himself and is forced to mount his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles.
All the while he needs to look over his shoulder—as an officer of the court he is an instant target, and he makes few friends when he reveals a corruption plot within the jail.
But the bigger plot is the one against him. Haller knows he’s been framed, whether by a new enemy or an old one.
As his trusted team, including his half-brother, Harry Bosch, investigates, Haller must use all his skills in the courtroom to counter the damning evidence against him.
Even if he can obtain a not-guilty verdict, Mickey understands that it won’t be enough.
In order to be truly exonerated, he must find out who really committed the murder and why. That is the law of innocence.
Desert Star (2022)
Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard Book with a brief appearance by Mickey Haller
A year has passed since LAPD detective Renée Ballard quit the force in the face of misogyny, demoralization, and endless red tape. But after the chief of police himself tells her she can write her own ticket within the department, Ballard takes back her badge, leaving “the Late Show” to rebuild and lead the cold case unit at the elite Robbery-Homicide Division.
For years, Harry Bosch has been working a case that haunts him—the murder of an entire family by a psychopath who still walks free. Ballard makes Bosch an offer: come volunteer as an investigator in her new Open-Unsolved Unit, and he can pursue his “white whale” with the resources of the LAPD behind him.
First priority for Ballard is to clear the unsolved rape and murder of a sixteen-year-old girl. The decades-old case is essential to the councilman who supported re-forming the unit, and who could shutter it again—the victim was his sister. When Ballard gets a “cold hit” connecting the killing to a similar crime, proving that a serial predator has been at work in the city for years, the political pressure has never been higher.
To keep momentum going, she has to pull Bosch off his own investigation, the case that is the consummation of his lifelong mission.
The two must put aside old resentments and new tensions to run to ground not one but two dangerous killers who have operated with brash impunity.
Mickey Haller has a fleeting appearance in the book.
Resurrection Walk (2023)
Lincoln Lawyer Book Featuring Harry Bosch
Defense attorney Mickey Haller is back, taking the long shot cases, where the chances of winning are one in a million.
After getting a wrongfully convicted man out of prison, he is inundated with pleas from incarcerated people claiming innocence.
He enlists his half brother, retired LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, to weed through the letters, knowing most claims will be false.
Bosch pulls a needle from the haystack: a woman in prison for killing her husband, a sheriff’s deputy, but who still maintains her innocence.
Bosch reviews the case and sees elements that don’t add up, and a sheriff’s department intent on bringing quick justice in the killing of one of its own.
Now Haller has an uphill battle in court, a David fighting Goliaths to vindicate his client.
The path for both lawyer and investigator is fraught with danger from those who don’t want the case reopened and will stop at nothing to keep the Haller-Bosch dream team from finding the truth.