THE FIFTH WITNESS

Ayo Onatade is an avid reader of crime and mystery fiction. She has been writing reviews, interviews and articles on the subject for the last 12 years; with an eclectic taste from historical to hardboiled, short stories and noir films

Orion Books

RRP: £18.99

Released: 14th April 2011

Hbk

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Things are not actually looking up for Micky Haller in The Fifth Witness. Things are so bad that he has started running a ‘foreclosure defence” from his car. His first client Lisa Trammel is fighting hard to keep her home. But the bank has gotten a restraining order to stop his client’s objections, and she then becomes the main suspect when the mortgage banker involved in her case is killed with a hammer in his office parking lot.

Even Micky Haller has difficulties in believing in her innocence as all the evidence points to her guilt. However, when Haller himself is attacked things begin to change and his team have to find evidence that Bondurant the mortgage broker was involved in illegal and unethical dealings before he was brutally murdered.

In The Fifth Witness we see much more of the courtroom than we normally would in a Micky Haller story. We also get to see how Connelly uses extremely well the current situation of mortgage foreclosure as a background to the novel. This is achieved with an exceptionally good first-person narration in which Haller takes us through the courtroom drama as it takes place mistakes an all but also with adroit inventiveness. To top it all the ending will certainly be a shock to the system and a major change in Haller’s life.

Mike Connelly is not the type of author to rest on his laurels and you can immediately appreciate this with The Fifth Witness. Riveting, twisty and with a cliff-hanger that will leave you wanting more dare I say that The Fifth Witness will find its way on to the best of list for 2011? I would certainly be surprised if it does not.