Is Michael Connelly stepping out on Harry Bosch or what? Because lately it seems the restless author has been spending an inordinate amount of time with his criminal defense Los Angeles attorney Mickey Haller instead of staying at home with his bread-and-butter, troubled homicide cop. In less than three years, Haller (first introduced in The Lincoln Lawyer in 2005) has appeared in three subsequent novels and at least one short story. But while the Haller books seem to be doing well for their author, the profits apparently aren’t trickling down to Mickey.

His latest, the timely, angry The Fifth Witness, finds the perpetually on-the-make attorney still motorvating around town, hustling for clients, but now reduced to “foreclosure defense” cases—keeping banks and mortgage companies from illegally evicting his clients from their homes. Not exactly big bucks cases, maybe, but Mickey’s more than content to deal in volume—all from the back seat of his Lincoln, of course.

Still, a big paycheck would be nice, and one waltzes in when his foreclosure client, Lisa Trammel, an unpleasantly self-righteous single mom turned mortgage activist, is charged with the murder of Mitchell Bondurant, the mortgage specialist at her bank. Haller immediately takes on Lisa’s defense, his eye on the lucrative movie rights to the story.

But to call this story “ripped from the headlines” is to slight Connelly, whose story goes far beyond glib, simplistic newspaper accounts and sound-bite rhetoric, and digs deep into our current economic and cultural malaise. Connelly’s actually read a newspaper story or two and it shows, as he creates a surprisingly effective and unsettling tale that meshes his usual sterling courtroom intrigue, solid detective work, muscular plotting, and sharply etched characters with a large dumping of angry salt on the cynical, callous leeches—from Wall Street to Hollywood and beyond—who would profit from our suffering.