Sometimes, the truth is right in front of our eyes, but we don’t want to see it. We refuse to entertain any possibility of misdeeds because we desperately want to trust the person standing right in front of us. The Lincoln Lawyer had a similar feeling about Lisa Trammell. Neither Lisa nor Mickey Haller believed in sharing the bed after a first meeting, but it was something that actually happened. Or maybe it was something Lisa had planned from the beginning. Now, before we say anything with certainty, here’s a due warning for the readers that we are going to mention spoilers from the book. Hence, if you don’t want to know too much too soon, feel free to close the article. But if you are eager to find out what really happened in Michael Connelly’s book, then follow us ahead.
Book Spoilers Alert
In the Netflix series, Lisa Trammell is a restaurant owner who owns a joint named Elysian. It is in the same neighborhood that L.A.-based real estate businessman, Mitchell Bondurant, wants to develop, and therefore, Lisa fears losing her restaurant. When Mickey Haller visits her joint, Lisa makes an exception for LA’s hottest Defense Attorney and serves him a complimentary meal. Haller believes that he is enjoying extra privileges because he has now become the hotshot lawyer in town, but there is another side to this story.
We believe Lisa has been keeping an eye on the Lincoln Lawyer from the beginning because she has some ulterior motives, and Haller can play a key role in her scheme. If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then in this case, Mickey Haller would be the perfect example to prove this theory. Lisa quite charmingly shows him around and mentions that she has grown all her herbs in her own garden. As for Haller, he not only enjoys Lisa’s eyes on him but also the food she cooks, and that is just the beginning. Haller slowly gets entangled in an intricate web of lies and deceit that Lisa weaves for him.
Lisa and Haller make love on the very first night they meet, and the next day, Lisa cunningly shares the dilemma of her life with him. She wants to get rid of the construction workers in her vicinity and the real estate scavenger who wants to kick her out of her own property. If you are wondering why Lisa was so attached to this property, the reason was that she had buried her ex-husband, Jeff, in the backyard and didn’t want her crime to be unearthed. In the first episode of Season 2, Lisa takes Haller to a garden, where she asks him to smell the cilantro. We believe it is the exact same spot where we may find Jeff’s dead body.
Throughout Season 2, Haller has been quite eager to meet Lisa’s ex-husband, but she persistently denies his request and asks Haller to keep Jeff out of the picture. She even lies to him, saying that he has walked out of their lives when the truth is that he doesn’t even exist anymore. To strengthen her lies, Lisa pays an imposter (probably) to call Haller just to make him believe in her cause, and for the time being, all her lies and deceit really pay off as the Lincoln Lawyer fails to see through any of it.
In the book, it is mentioned that Jeff had taken a huge mortgage against the property in order to start a business. But soon, he changed his mind and planned to disappear with the money. Perhaps Lisa felt betrayed and, as an act of revenge, brutally murdered Jeff and buried him in the garden. In the absence of her husband, Lisa started dating a Hollywood guy named Herbert “Herb” Dahl, who has been introduced in the series as Henry Dahl, a podcast producer. The guy appears quite randomly in her life, and we have had our suspicions about him. As it turns out, this Dahl guy has been working for Lisa from the start. She planted him quite cunningly so that she could manipulate Haller through him. It was Dahl who had sent goons into the parking lot to bash up Haller. The attack not only strengthened Lisa’s case in court as her lawyer was brutally attacked but also introduced a major player, who apparently had nothing to do with Lisa or Bondurant, yet his involvement turned the entire investigation upside down.
In the books, Dahl revealed to Haller that he took a loan from a gangster to make some movies. When he failed to pay, the gangster asked him for a favor instead. Dahl had to get close to Lisa. Long story short, Dahl finally revealed to Haller that he had been working for a boss named Louis Opparizio. In the series, Opparizio has probably been introduced as Alex Grant. But there is a catch. The real name of Alex Grant is Alex Kazarian, who is the son of Sasha Kazarian, head of the Armenian crime family. So, in the first part of the second season, Haller found out that Alex had sent a threatening letter to Bondurant. The letter made him believe that Alex had some hand in Bondurant’s murder, but it was a seed of doubt sown by Dahl and Lisa to trick Haller into shifting his focus to another suspect. And as good as the Lincoln Lawyer was at his job, Lisa knew he would find a way to reveal Alex’s connection to a crime family, and that would trick the jury into believing that Bondurant’s murder was much more than what meets the eye. And yes, that is how Mickey Haller proves Lisa not guilty in court by making Alex Grant the straw guy.
Nevertheless, Lisa’s charm and spells quickly fade away as Haller finds out that she is the real culprit. The truth makes him question his own integrity. He is quite shaken by the fact that every time an alleged criminal makes him believe that they are innocent, he puts his own life at stake to prove that, only to find out that it’s all been a big lie. The Lincoln Lawyer, unable to recover from such a betrayal, quickly reveals to the police that the dead body is buried in Lisa’s garden. The garden that Lisa took pride in eventually became the reason for her downfall. Lisa’s case might make Mickey realize that instead of running after a woman who shows interest in him, he should reconcile with his wife, Maggie, and use his talent to defend innocent people instead of being a fanny magnet for criminals. Maybe the end of The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2 will bring this transformation to his character. And we will eagerly wait for the next part to come out so as to witness how it all plays out on screen.
