The Gods of Guilt (Mickey Haller 5) (45 page)

Everybody has a jury, the voices they carry inside. Earl Briggs sits on my jury, Gloria Dayton, too. They are there with Katie and Sandy, my mother, my father, and soon Legal Siegel as well. Those I have loved and those I have hurt. Those who bless me and those who haunt me. My gods of guilt. Every day I carry on and I carry them close. Every day I step into the well before them and I argue my case.

The starting point for this story came alive during a discussion with Tom Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi, producers of
The Lincoln Lawyer
. To them the author will always be grateful.

The author also relied upon the help of many others in the research and writing of this book. They include Asya Muchnick, Bill Massey, Daniel Daly, Roger Mills, Dennis Wojciechowski, John Romano, Greg Kehoe, Terrill Lee Lankford, Linda Connelly, Alafair Burke, Rick Jackson, Tim Marcia, John Houghton, Jane Davis, Heather Rizzo, Pamela Marshall, and Henrik Bastin. Many, many thanks to all.

Michael Connelly is the author of twenty-five previous novels including the #1
New York Times
bestsellers
The Black Box, The Drop, The Fifth Witness, The Reversal, The Scarecrow, The Brass Verdict
, and
The Lincoln Lawyer
, as well as the bestselling Harry Bosch series of novels. He is a former newspaper reporter who has won numerous awards for his journalism and his novels. He spends his time in California and Florida.

Fiction
The Black Echo
The Black Ice
The Concrete Blonde
The Last Coyote
The Poet
Trunk Music
Blood Work
Angels Flight
Void Moon
A Darkness More Than Night
City of Bones
Chasing the Dime
Lost Light
The Narrows
The Closers
The Lincoln Lawyer
Echo Park
The Overlook
The Brass Verdict
The Scarecrow
Nine Dragons
The Reversal
The Fifth Witness
The Drop
The Black Box

Non-Fiction
Crime Beat

E-books
Suicide Run
Angle of Investigation
Mulholland Dive
The Safe Man

AN ORION EBOOK

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Orion Books
This eBook first published in 2013 by Orion Books
Copyright © 2013 by Hieronymus, Inc.

The moral right of Michael Connelly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 4091 3436 7

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