My just-about adoptive mother June Russell, of Swans Island, Maine, was the one who got me into Michael Connelly, the author of unimpressive-looking, platitudinous-named, pocket-sized cop mysteries with spines that creased too often and too easily when you got really into the investigation, the pursuit, the brainstorming of it all. She promised when I finished one, she would send another. I’m five deep into the novels about LAPD detective Harry Bosch now. There are nine left. Delicious.

Another Connelly mystery recently put to screen, “The Lincoln Lawyer,” barrels forth with the same hurried pace and driven main character, except Mick Haller (played by Matthew McConaughey) is a defense attorney; people in the detective world seem to by-and-large hate him (“How does someone like you sleep at night, with all the scum you represent?” froths a detective still burning about the 15 years in San Quentin one of Haller’s clients is doing for the murder of a woman named Donna Renteria). In the opening scene, he gets the judge to postpone a marijuana growing trial because he’s having trouble (ahem) locating an important witness (ahem) by the name of Mr. Green. Meaning he hasn’t been paid. And the judge knows this. And the trial is continued. On his way to a better-paying case (he is being chauffeured in a funeral-quality gas-guzzling black Lincoln, doing deals and paperwork from a backseat office because, it is inferred, he lost his license for drunken driving) he is pulled over by the first defendant’s tough biker pals, to whom he explains he needs more money to bring in an aerial photo expert who will have the case thrown out because the DEA was flying too low. At the better-paying case — a rich boy, Louis Roulet (played by Ryan Phillippe), accused of beating up a prostitute — he calls over a freelance TV cameraman and, in front of the nervous rich boy’s handler, gives him $1,000 (the handler says he can expense it) not to sell the tape to local news. After getting most of that money back (the “cameraman” is a friend) he gets charges against a habitual prostitute dropped because she can trade prosecutors the location of the john — a much bigger fish who’s wanted in Florida and had a suitcase full of cocaine.

This guy is awesome.

It’s not worth puncturing any of this story’s balloons to get into the Louis Roulet case, suffice it to say that people we soon care about are killed, or threatened, or chased, or driven to their ends over truth, innocence, sex and injustice, and none of it, for a second, comes off as made-up or overblown, because almost no one’s all right or all wrong. Watching “Lincoln Lawyer” is like being a Lincoln lawyer — cool, air conditioned, well directed and smart.

No, the language isn’t rare, ancient and strong like Nabokov. It’s not even a narcotic-like, fanciful escape like J.K. Rowling. (And the jerky, can’t-decide-where-to-focus, hand-held, TV-looking camera-work throughout is the worst thing about the movie, though thankfully it can be overlooked most of the time.) But Connelly (a former crime writer — a profession dear to my heart) has the basic elements down: that every good story is a gripping mystery. How can Romeo and Juliet figure out how to be together? Can Alex DeLarge escape his therapy? Can Humbert Humbert escape his brain? Can Mark Renton escape smack? Will Sal Paradise — or Raoul Duke — ever find the American Dream? Who is John Galt? What’s Oz — or that green light at the end of the dock?

One can write purple essays about the deep significance behind all of those quests, but the audience wouldn’t care about any of those situations if it weren’t for a compelling character, whether it’s a Kansas orphan, a thug hooked on heroin, or a cocky attorney, in an impractical, un-California car, with the license place “NTGUILTY.”

Ashley O’Dell reviews movies that aren’t in theaters anymore.