Monday, January 31, 2011

The Lincoln Lawyer (last nine pages)

First, Detectives Lankford and Sobel come over and arrest Roulet for the murder of Martha Renteria. Mickey is scared because he thinks that the cops don't have enough evidence to convict Roulet unless they get a confession out of Louis.

After 12 hours in a confession room with officers drilling a confession out of Roulet, they find out that they cannot hold him any longer. They let Louis go, freaking out Mickey. He has Val watch him on his ankle tracking device. While this is going on, Mickey calls Maggie to tell her to get home and get Hayley and get the heck out of town. She hurries home, but while packing up Hayley's bag, Val calls back saying that Louis just turned onto Maggie's street. Mickey begins freaking out, thinking that he has caused his ex-wife and daughter's death.

Mickey hangs up the phone and runs for the door so that he can drive over to at least try to save Hayley and Maggie. He knows that he can't get there in time, but he doesn't want to just sit at home while his world comes crashing down. Mickey opens the door, and bang. He falls to the ground with a bullet in his stomach. He can barely move as he looks up and sees who it is, it wasn't Louis, it was his Louis' mother, mary Windsor. He reaches for the inside of his coat which holds a pistol he borrowed from his driver Earl.

Mary moves in closer and points the gun at Mickey's face. He puts his arms up as a surrender sign with one of his arms behind the coat he is also holding up. Bang.

Mary falls to ground, Mickey hit her in the head. He hears foot steps coming up the door and a familiar female voice. Detective Heidi Sobel entered the room. Apparenly, her and Lankford had been keeping an eye on Mickey. As he is laying on the ground he mumbles Hayley, that's when Sobel tells him the truth. The whole time Maggie had been lying to him. She had to make it believable; therefore, she couldn't tell Mickey in advance that her and Hayley were safe. It was all a trick because Mary and Louis had tapped into his phone lines.

Sobel and Mickey come to the conclusion that Mary had been the one that killed Levin. Louis hadn't pulled off some magic trick with the bracelt, his mom did the dirty work. She had never been raped, it was all just a trick to cover up the many lies and murders that Louis had commited. As the book wraps up, Mickey falls asleep, but not to worry he was fine. Three surgeries later and a conviction of two murders and one attempted murder on Louis Roulet, Mickey gets back to work after a sebaticle.

Response: I have never read anything like that before in my entire life. This book was amazing, so many twists and turns....it was awesome. But the last nine pages were pure genious. After I finished it I just looked up and said, "what just happened?". It was so good I re-read those last pages 4 times.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Terrified, Katherine McPhee and Zachery Levi

I heard this amazing song today and I felt that I had to put the lyrics on here. I love a song with a meaning.....

You, by the light
Is the greatest find
In a world full of wrong
You're the thing that's right

Finally made it through the lonely
To the other side

You set it again, my heart's in motion
Every word feels like a shooting star
I'm at the edge of my emotions
Watching the shadows burning in the dark

And I'm in love
And I'm terrified
For the first time and the last time
In my only life

And this could be good
It's already better than that
And nothing's worse
Than knowing you're holding back

I could be all that you need
If you let me try

You set it again, my heart's in motion
Every word feels like a shooting star
I'm at the edge of my emotions
Watching the shadows burning in the dark

And I'm in love
And I'm terrified
For the first time and the last time
In my only

I only said it 'cause I mean it
I only mean 'cause it's true
So don't you doubt what I've been dreaming
'Cause it fills me up and holds me close whenever I'm without you

You set it again, my heart's in motion
Every word feels like a shooting star
I'm at the edge of my emotions
Watching the shadows burning in the dark

And I'm in love
And I'm terrified
For the first time and the last time
In my only

The Lincoln Lawyer (pages 220-394)

Initially, the two detectives assigned to the murder of Raul Levin (Lankford and Sobel) ask Haller about Levin, not questioning or suspecting him, just trying to find out information about Raul. Over the next couple chapters though, Lankford begins to suspect Mickey, mostly because of his hatred for all lawyers. Mickey's show pistol that was handed down to him by his deceased father is identified as the murder weapon by ballistics, and when Mickey goes to look for it, it is gone. Mickey instantly realizes that Roulet stole his gun when he broke into his house a couple nights before. This leads him to be extra cautious while he plots against Roulet in court.

As he goes into trial, Mickey still tries to help Roulet be found innocent. He tricks the rookie prosecuter, Ted Minton, into mistakes that cause him to lose the case. The mistakes include a charge of failure to pass information to the defense and manor in the courtroom. Ted's superior comes to the final day of court and tells the judge that the state drops all charges against Roulet. Outside of the court, Roulet and his family thanks Mickey for his work and Roulet even proceeds to threaten Mickey if he attempts to take him down. As all of this is happening, Mickey sees Heidi Sobel, the detective on the Levin murder, waiting on the other side of the lobby by the elevator.

Response: I was really mad at the book for these 170 pages or so. The author left things out, only talking about the case and how Roulet was released. At this point I was against Roulet and furious that he was being let go. Also, I was scared that Mickey would be charged with the murder of Levin. The book was getting really good, and I was furious, but in a good way. I felt that I had to leave the last 9 pages in a different post becuase, well it deserves it with how the book ends.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

A Friend

I wrote this poem after my family had to put my 8 year old dog down.

A friend who loved everyone,
and always truely cared.
A friend that I could talk to,
and would always be there.

A friend that would help me,
when i was bound to drown.
A friend that would lift me,
right up off the ground.

A friend who I loved so much,
I cried and sobbed and teared.
A friend who meant the world to me,
but is no longer here.

A friend who neated to be treated,
but we didn't have the money.
A friend who had to be put down,
I am so sorry honey.

Scooby, I love you more than anything,
and now I truely know.
That even when life gets rough,
friends can make it so-so.

You taught me how to live,
and that it's okay to cry.
I'm so sorry you had to go,
it wasn't your turn to die.

Friday, January 21, 2011

The Lincoln Lawyer (pages 160-220)

This book is by far the creepiest thing that I have ever read in my entire life. Granted I haven't read many books, but this is at the top. I am the kind of person that laughs at scary movies, but I have found myself getting chills up and down my spine almost every page. In my favorite show Friends, Joey has this thing where he will put a book in the freezer when he is terrified; he reads "Cujo" a lot. Well, right now, I am blogging only after 40 pages while my book is in the freezer.

Up until page 160, the book was still making the introduction, showing the life of Louis Roulet, the defendent, and his lawyer Mickey Haller. It was giving a background on the case, and describing why Louis should be considered innocent. The police report was read and Louis stuck to his side of the story. I felt terrible for Louis because he was being set-up by Reggie Campo. I am serious when I say that I seriously wanted to hurt Reggie because of her lies, and then everything changed.

Mickey starts digging up old cases and finds out that the knife used to threaten Reggie was the same knife used in a murder two years ago where Haller's defendent was given the death sentence. The entire book twisted around, and you find out that Louis is not only guilty of attempted rape/murder of Reggie, but also the woman killed in the old case, and he was possibly linked to three other cases as well.

At this point I was freaking out, I couldn't believe that a writer was able to twist a book in that big of a way. Connelly was able to make me feel sympathy for Roulet, and then on a dime turn those feelings into hatred, and for me, nightmares. So while I'm freaking out, I continue reading, and only 10 pages later, Haller's P.I. is murdered. Haller states that he doesn't know how Roulet could possibly beat the tracking device, but he knows that he did it.

This book has me smiling and freaking out all in one, by far best book ever, and I still have 200 pages left. :)

I can't wait to see what happens next, especially since the actress from bones' character was just introduced.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Pressure of the Game

Slowly dripping down,
and sliding off your face.
Showing all your fear,
as your heart begins to race.

You search for the break,
looking at the slope.
You just can't figure it out,
and you've lost all hope.

You talk to your caddy,
he's stumped to.
So you go with your gut,
since there's nothing better to do.

You let the ball go,
rolling down the green.
Praying for a miracle,
you start to cringe and lean.

But then it falls,
right down the cup.
So like Tiger Woods,
you do a fist pump.

You're still in shock,
it just can't be true.
But time to forget it,
now onto number two.

The Lady Spartans

The Lincoln Lawyer (pages 1-160)

"There is no client as scary as an innocent man."

Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn't recognize innocence if it stood right in front of him. Being a defense attorney, he normally fights for people who are guilty and he is trying to keep out of prison. In most cases, Mickey is able to keep his clients out, following in the footsteps of his deceased father.

Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers - they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence, but instead a game of negotiation and manipulation.

As the book reaches the third chapter, Mickey is introduced to Louis Roulet, a Beverly Hills real estate agent arrested for attacking a woman he picked up in a bar. Rouley chooses Haller to defend him, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years. It is a defense attorney's dream, what they call a franchise case. Mickey for once believes that he is defending a client that could in fact be innocent, and that scares the crap out of him.

The Lincoln Lawyer (Chapters 14 and 14, pages 119-137)

I realized that each post should cover more than just simply two chapters, but after reading these two today, a post was a necessity. A brief over view of what has happened from the previous post to chapter 13:

The prosecutor, Maggie McFierce, was dropped from the case, and was replaced by Ted Milton, a young and inexperienced lawyer with criminal cases. After discovering that Reggie, the victim, was a young actress in need of money now currently selling herself, Mickey and the detective on the case dig deeper. They discover that their client, Roulet, was actually lying to them and he had gone to the apartment to pay for Reggie. After confronting him, Mickey warns Louis not to mess with him again, and the slate becomes clean. The detective also discovered a video from the bar where the client and victim met, and with the new evidence, Mickey believes he can send Louis walking.

Now, Mickey is meeting with the prosecutor to go over what each side of the bar has. Mickey is suspicious when Milton is overly friendly in showing him some of what he has on Louis. Following courtesy, Mickey hands over the DVD, giving away his biggest weapon in the case. Unable to convince Milton not to drop the case, Mickey becomes frustrated and loses his focus. As he walks away from the meeting he is shaken and confused. He soon realizes that he had been set up and had been embarrassed in the meeting with Milton and worse, he had tipped him early in the hole card. Now Mickey is going to have to either settle for prison time for Louis or he is going to face a case with almost no chance of winning.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Lincoln Lawyer - Michael Connely

Most people who hang around me for more than a good minute or so tend to know that I love watching TV shows, not movies, plays, documentaries, or anything like that, strictly TV shows. One of my all time favorite shows is Bones. The show centers around a forensic anthropologist and basically her FBI partner and "squinterns", as the show refers to her colleagues, solve murder cases on decomposed bodies. I basically know everything about the show to the point where I can consider myself borderline-creepy.

Anyways, every once in a while I go on IMBD or Wikipedia to see what people have to say about the show. One thing always leads to another and I end up spending sometimes a good hour clicking on different links that are added on the page. I found myself on Michaela Conlin's site, she plays Angela Montenegro on the show, and I noticed something pretty awesome in my mind. Angela is one of my favorite characters on TV alongside Joey Tribiani from Friends and a couple others. One of the posts about her said that she was in an upcoming movie called 'The Lincoln Lawyer', so naturally I also left-clicked that and ended up on that page. I have already decided that I am seeing the movie when it comes out in March, but I also found out that it was a book first.

After going on a wild goose chase, I tracked the book down, threw the current book I'm reading back on my shelf, and I have already begun the book. It's safe to say I am engrossed in it at this point, mostly because I'm still waiting for Michaela's character to be introduced. It stinks that I am so busy with basketball though because engrossed for me means I read twenty pages today. I have to say though, it's really interesting and intense right now....and the movie trailer looked the same way. Can't wait for Detective Heidi Sobel to be introduced!...and yes I know, I'm weird.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

A Time to Kill - John Grisham (pages 1-153)

The story begins in Clanton, a small town in southern Mississippi, as Tonya Lee is walking home from the grocery store.  She is a small, ten year old black-girl, and within minutes her life, and her family's, is shattered.  Two drunken white men pick her up on the side of the road and begin to torture her.  Along with rape, beatings, and an attempted murder, Tonya is thrown over the side of a bridge where she is later found.  The entire black community in the town is shattered as the police arrest Billy Ray Cobb and his friend Willard. 

The trial was set and Carl Lee, the father of Tonya, could only think of revnege.  As the two defendents began walking through the courthouse, Lee popped out of a side room where he had been hiding.  He killed both Willard and Cobb and also injured an officer.

Now, Jake Brigance, a young defense attorney is hired to help Carl as he is put on trial for murder.  Early in the case, Jake faces many struggles with upset towns people such as the local KKK organization.  His wife, daughter, and close friends are now all put in danger as he is taking on a case bigger than anything else placed before him.