Michael Connelly's 'The Fifth Witness' receives 2012 Harper Lee Prize

The University of Alabama School of Law and the American Bar Association Journal recently announced that best-selling author Michael Connelly has been awarded the second annual Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction for his novel, “The Fifth Witness.”

The other finalists for this year’s Harper Lee Prize included “Murder One” by Robert Dugoni and “Breach of Trust” by David Ellis.

First awarded in 2011 to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction is awarded annually “to a published work of fiction that best exemplifies the positive role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change.” John Grisham’s novel, “The Confession,” received the inaugural Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction in September 2011.

The prize, which was initiated two years ago in Tuscaloosa by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, is a way of honoring Lee, a former UA law student, for the “role model she created for the legal professional and for the extraordinary cultural phenomenon that her novel has become.”

“To Kill a Mockingbird,” first published in 1960, is narrated by the young daughter of a small town, Alabama lawyer, who is tasked with defending a black man wrongly accused of assaulting a white woman. Her father, Atticus Finch, is widely regarded as one of the foremost heroes in American literature and as a model of integrity and morality. The book won the Pulitzer Prize and is considered an American literary classic.

A selection committee picks the winning title from the field of finalists, and this year’s committee consisted of five members. The members of the committee were Linda Fairstein, Condoleezza Rice, Lisa Scottoline, Nina Totenberg and Juan Williams. In conjunction with the Library of Congress National Book Festival, Connelly will be presented with the award on Sept. 20 during a ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Connelly has written dozens of books over the years and many of them involve lawyers and the legal profession. What follows is a complete list of his books in order of publication.

- The Black Echo (1992)
- The Black Ice (1993)
- The Concrete Blonde (1994)
- The Last Coyote (1995)
- The Poet (1996)
- Trunk Music (1997)
- Blood Work (1998)
- Angels Flight (1999)
- Void Moon (2000)
- A Darkness More Than Night (2001)
- City of Bones (2002)
- Chasing the Dime (2002)
- Lost Light (2003)
- The Narrows (2004)
- The Closers (2005)
- The Lincoln Lawyer (2005)
- Crime Beat (2006)
- Echo Park (2006)
- The Overlook (2007)
- The Brass Verdict (2008)
- 9 Dragons (2009)
- The Scarecrow (2009)
- The Reversal (2010)
- Angle of Investigation (2011)
- The Drop (2011)
- The Fifth Witness (2011)
- Suicide Run (2011)
- The Black Box (2012)

In the end, how many of Connelly’s books have you had a chance to read? Which did you like or dislike? Which would you recommend and why? Let us know in the comments section below.