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The Brass Verdict Reviews
Bestseller Connelly delivers one of his most intricate plots to date in his 20th book, a beautifully executed crime thriller. When L.A. lawyer Mickey Haller, last seen in The Lincoln Lawyer (2005), inherits the practice and caseload of a fellow defense attorney, Jerry Vincent, who's been murdered, the high-profile double-homicide case against famed Hollywood producer Walter Elliot, accused of shooting his wife and her alleged lover, takes top priority. As Haller scrambles to build a defense, he butts heads with LAPD Det. Harry Bosch, the stalwart hero of Connelly's long-running series (The Black Echo,
etc.), who's working Vincent's murder. When Haller realizes that the Elliot affair is bigger than simply a jealous husband killing his cheating wife, he and Bosch grudgingly agree to work together to solve what
could be the biggest case in both their careers. Bosch might have met his match in the wily Haller, and readers will delight in their sparring.
Publishers Weekly, ** Starred Review
It hasn't gone well for L.A. lawyer Mickey Haller since the events described in The Lincoln Lawyer (2005). The recovery from being shot was slow, and the addiction to prescription drugs was worse than the
recovery. But Haller has kicked the pills and is ready to practice law again when his friend and fellow attorney Jerry Vincent is murdered, and Mickey inherits all Vincent's cases, including a career-maker: the
trial of a studio executive accused of killing his wife and her lover. Quickly, Mickey realizes he's caught in the middle: defending the mogul requires concealing facts that could help solve the Vincent murder. OK,
Mickey's used to playing fast and loose with the cops, but the investigating officer, Harry Bosch, knows when he's being played. Careful Connelly readers will know that there's a connection between the author's two
heroes, Bosch and Haller, even though this is the first time the two have appeared in the same book (see The Black Ice, 1993). Connelly plays the dueling characters off against one another effectively, especially for those familiar with the previous books, but it isn't all about backstory. Like Lincoln Lawyer,
this is a fine legal thriller, full of both electric courtroom scenes and fascinating behind-the-scenes stuff about the business of lawyering. Connelly is justly celebrated for his characters and his ability to
create mood from the sights and sounds of L.A., but he's also a terrific plotter, and that skill is in high relief here. Essential for fans; a great read for anybody.
Bill Ott, Booklist, ** Starred Review
The answer to every Connelly fan's dream: Hieronymus Bosch meets the Lincoln Lawyer. Away from the courtroom for two years after he was shot (The Lincoln Lawyer, 2005), Mickey Haller plans a gradual return to
the legal practice he runs from the back seat of his car. But the plan is abruptly accelerated by the murder of his colleague Jerry Vincent, who designated Mickey as the attorney who'd take over his list of clients
if anything happened to him. One client is a high-profile defendant guaranteed to put Mickey back on the map. Hollywood studio head Walter Elliot is accused of killing his much younger wife Mitzi, who evidently took
the recent vesting of her prenup as the signal to file for divorce, and her even younger lover, interior decorator Johan Rilz, who wasn't nearly as gay as Mitzi had hinted. Before Mickey can claim victory, however,
he'll have to explain away the gunpowder residue on his client's hands; he'll have to figure out what secret the client is hiding from him that makes him so sure he's going to get off; and he'll have to be ready to
go to trial in ten days. While he's racing around trying to fit the pieces together, he'll cross swords repeatedly with Connelly's long-running hero, Det. Harry Bosch, the 33-year veteran of Robbery-Homicide (The Overlook,
2007, etc.) who's investigating Vincent's murder. Despite twists aplenty, the trial drags on for so many pages that savvy readers will solve the mystery ahead of Mickey. But his relationship with Bosch, whom he
doesn't recognize as his half brother, is satisfyingly resourcefulby turns wary, competitive, complementary, cooperative and mutually predatory. Even if the case is less than baffling, Connelly brings his two
sleuths together in a way that honors them both.
Kirkus Reviews, ** Starred Review
Mickey Haller, last seen in The Lincoln Lawyer, returns to the courtroom in an unusual way here. Former colleague Jerry Vincent is murdered, and his caseload is dropped in Haller's lap. One of
Vincent's high-profile cases involved a movie mogul accused of killing his wife and her lover in a jealous rage. As Haller prepares the mogul's defense, he discovers that Vincent's killer might have chosen him as
the next target. Haller must trust Harry Bosch, the police officer investigating Vincent's murder, if he is going to survive and trust his instincts if he is going to succeed in convincing a jury of his client's
innocence. Connelly is firing on all cylinders in this epic page-turner. The intriguing story line, the chance to view Bosch from another perspective, and Haller's reappearance as a main character add up to a
fantastic read. One of the best thrillers of the year and a mandatory purchase for all public libraries.
Jeff Ayers, Library Journal
"...I tore into Michael Connelly's The Brass Verdict, which is everything you'd expect in a Connelly novel -- twisty, fast and assured. He brings back his Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller, and
hands him another lawyer's entire practice when the other attorney is murdered. The lead detective on that case is Harry Bosch. Besides the legal thrills, the interesting aspect of this book is that Harry Bosch is
seen from a different view. While we're used to seeing Harry as the lead character and the 'hero,' he's now portrayed as the antagonist of the lead character Haller and that casts him in a different light. We
know Bosch is a good guy, but the natural and inevitable conflict between cops by a lawyer puts a new cast on Bosch's place in the story, and that's interesting. I would also have to nominate the title, The Brass Verdict,
as being the greatest Chandlerian title to come along in years. It refers to street justice, something this book contains in spades."
JB Dickey, Seattle Mystery Bookshop
Do not begin The Brass Verdict if you have pressing commitments or responsibilities. They could be seriously neglected. The 20th mystery by Michael Connelly is not a mystery novel. With an intricate plot and more than a few surprises, it is a drama in the purest sense of the word. Not only does Connelly formulate an engaging story, he provides great characters. His central figures have strong personalities and rich histories. Intense, brilliant and highly competent, yet they are flawed individuals. This not only makes them real, but allows us to like and respect who they have become. Mickey Haller, dubbed the Lincoln Lawyer because of the well-equipped vehicle he makes his rolling office, is a ruthless defense attorney with well-honed skills. Kept out of the limelight by past mistakes (see The Lincoln Lawyer though
you do not have to be familiar with it to enjoy The Brass Verdict), he is abruptly thrust into the thick of two high profile murder cases when he inherits the active practice of former colleague Jerry Vincent
who is found shot in a parking garage. Information contained in Vincent's case files is a likely motive for the crime thus Heller's life is placed at immediate risk. Enter detective Harry Bosch, the seasoned
renegade cop familiar to Michael Connelly many fans. As a 33-year police veteran, his work is his life and his mission. He is the LAPD's lead investigator in the Vincent case. Although we are not used to Bosch
playing a background role, his presence in The Brass Verdict adds intrigue and interest and raises the bar to create a scenario in which the two equally passionate men, working on opposite sides of the judicial / law enforcement coin must battle mutual antagonism and mistrust in order to uncover the truth. Michael Connelly has an almost magnetic hold on his audience as he takes us on a thrill ride where he is always completely in control. He proves himself once again to be an excellent writer. Adept at dialogue and fast-paced excitement, his style is honest and straightforward. He brilliantly weaves an engaging tale, calculating just the right moments to inject significant information or keep his readers guessing. Connelly deftly connects the dots and provides concise summaries of the action to keep us on top of the story. Toward the middle of The Brass Verdict,
the momentum seems to wane, but something is always brewing. The excitement mounts and once again, this Connelly mystery novel becomes difficult to put down. It is an absorbing, well-choreographed thinking person's
book that contains everything we've learned to expect from Michael Connelly. Cryptic clues and unexpected relations entertain and thrill. Devoted fans and novice mystery readers alike will not be disappointed and
will likely hope for and wait with great anticipation of future Mickey Haller / Harry Bosch novels.
J. Curran, TheMysterySite.com
Connelly fans will love having two of his best characters in a single book. Defense Attorney Michael Haller has been on a one-year sabbatical. Going through rehab after becoming addicted to painkillers cost him his
wife, almost cost him his daughter and if he hadn't come to his senses, it would have cost him his life and career. He's ready to slowly come back when a lawyer friend, Jerry Vincent is murdered, and because he
had agreed to be his backup, Vincent's 31 cases fall into his lap. This includes the murder trial of the decade in LA that of Walter Elliott, movie magnate, accused of murdering his wife and her lover just days
after her prenuptial agreement was fully vested.When he arrives at Vincent's office, the LAPD is already going through his confidential files. Here Haller has his first run in with Bosch, the lead detective going
through the files. But as it turns out they each need information on cases they're involved in, and each may be able to help they other. If they can trust one another, that is. Preparing for the Elliott case will
take all the experience Haller and his team can muster, and then some. For the reader that likes to figure it out, the opening paragraph of this book should serve as a warning: Everyone lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie.
Witnesses lie. The victims lie. This book is a contest of delightful lies. See if you can separate out the truth. Armchair Interviews says: Connelly fans will be thrilled.
Armchair Interviews
"Clever plotting, numerous twists, satisfying yet surprising endings and crystal-clear writing. If you are already a fan, [Connelly's] twentieth book will satisfy like a case of your favorite treat. If you've lived
in a cave and have never tried a Connelly novel, dive inyou'll love it."
Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine
Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch has become one of the great figures in contemporary American mystery fiction, and this ethical, tough-but-softhearted Los Angeles policeman has brought enormous, well-deserved
success to his creator, Michael Connelly. Driven to protect the good people of his city and to put away the bad guys, Bosch is haunted by every case he can't solve and by every killer or rapist he can't catch. He's
the cop we would want on the case if something bad happened to someone we love. This stuff doesn't just come out of the ether; it comes from the author's own mind, and from his heart. Mr. Connelly knows what is
right and its converse, and so does the character who, to some degree, reflects the character of the author. Since Bosch got his first name partially from Harry "Dirty Harry" Callahan, you know the punks
he encounters are in for a hard day when they smugly point out that they have more rights than Captain Ahab's sock drawer. What a surprise, then, when Mr. Connelly wrote "The Lincoln Lawyer," about a
defense attorney, Mickey Haller, whose job it was to set loose the same hoods, thugs, and other lower forms of life whom Bosch worked so hard to put behind bars, and even made Haller a sympathetic character. If you
read "The Lincoln Lawyer" (and if you haven't, please see a therapist immediately, as you need serious and urgent help) you will recall that Haller is a somewhat less-than-successful attorney who does most
of his work from the backseat of his Lincoln Town Cars not because he can't afford an office, exactly, but because Los Angeles County has 40 courthouses spread over its 450 square miles and there can be no more
efficient way of covering them when the problems of his various clients require different venues. In the just released "The Brass Verdict" (Little, Brown, 405 pages, $26.99), Haller is back, and so is
perhaps inevitably, as they work in the same criminal justice system in the same city Bosch. Haller, a moral defense attorney (yes, the word "oxymoron" leaps to mind), works on the understanding that, as
he says, Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie. A trial is a contest of lies. And everybody in the courtroom knows this. The judge knows this. Even the jury knows this. They come into
the building knowing they will be lied to. They take their seats in the box and agree to be lied to. Haller believes his job is to be "the truth in a place where everybody lies." After a couple of
difficult years, good fortune strikes in a stunning manner. Jerry Vincent, a former colleague, is murdered and has named Haller to inherit his client list, most notably the lucrative case of Walter Elliot, the
executive of a movie studio who has been accused of murdering his wife and her lover. Elliot proves to be a difficult, noncooperative client with a boatload of secrets, and Haller's frustration mounts as he tries to
find the evidence that will set his client free. It becomes increasingly clear that someone will do whatever is needed to prevent this from happening. Vincent appears to have been killed because he learned too much
and as Haller digs deeper, hunting for the clue that he is convinced cost Vincent his life, he finds himself in peril of the same fate. As Bosch investigates the murder, he develops a plan to get the killer to raise
his head: Offer bait. Offer Haller. Bosch and Haller are related in more ways than just as two men on opposite sides of the criminal justice system. In the second novel about Bosch, "The Black Ice," he
learned that he had a half-brother, Mickey Haller, and circumstances finally bring them together in this superb novel. Even in the context of what is probably the finest legal system in the world, things do not
always work as they should. Haller's greatest fear is defending an innocent man. No lawyer wants an innocent man on his conscience if things go wrong. Sometimes the system cannot seem to dispense the justice that
society desires and needs. That is when someone may decide to ignore the rules and dispense simple street justice. It is delivered with a bullet. It is what cops call "the brass verdict."
Otto Penzler, The New York Sun
"When it comes to series mysteries, there's everybody else and then there's Michael Connelly. Is he really that good, you ask? Oh yeah, he's really that good. ...So as not to give away too much of the plot, let's just say this: The Brass Verdict is a certified page-turner that will suck you in from page one, and not let you go until the final sentence."
Bruce Tierney, Book Page
''Everybody lies,'' announces Mickey Haller, the narrator of Michael Connelly's peachy new legal thriller, The Brass Verdict. ''Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie. A trial is a contest of
lies.'' And Haller the likable, morally challenged Los Angeles defense attorney Connelly introduced in his outstanding 2005 novel The Lincoln Lawyer fancies himself an expert at manipulating such
contests. Using the backseat of his Lincoln as a mobile legal office, he loves playing the game, finding that one lie ''you can grab onto and forge like hot iron into a sharpened blade'' to break open a case. Or at
least he used to. As the novel begins, he's just starting back to work, weary and fragile after a year spent kicking an addiction to pain pills, when a judge tells him he's inherited all the cases left behind by a
murdered colleague, Jerry Vincent. Among them: the splashy trial of Walter Elliot, a slimeball movie mogul accused of slaughtering his wife and her lover at a Malibu beach house. The case turns out to be even
trickier than Mickey's usual, as the accused remains unswervingly, mysteriously confident of his future acquittal. While Mickey tries to figure out Elliot's defense as well as Elliot himself his half brother
Harry Bosch, the moody, difficult LAPD detective Connelly has been writing about since 1992, wants to track down Vincent's shooter, who may now be gunning for Mickey. Distrustful of one another, and often working at
cross purposes, Bosch and Mickey aren't quite a team yet; the novel's bifurcated action lacks the steamroller momentum that made Connelly's previous books so compulsively readable. But there's rich promise here for
future collaborations: Although they present themselves as opposite numbers Mickey's a romantic, soulful sleazebag, Bosch a dour and abrasive loner they're brothers in more than just name. Each uses the tools of
his trade, however unconventionally, to find the truth in Connelly's Los Angeles, where everybody does, indeed, lie. B+
Entertainment Weekly
A solid, suspenseful plot full of twists and surprises is de rigueur for a
Michael Connelly novel, and he certainly brings plenty of that in his 19th novel. "The Brass Verdict's" riveting story doubles as a highly charged legal thriller and a finely nuanced police procedural. But a richer, bolder story about family, especially brothers and fathers, redemption and recovery quickly rises to the top. "The Brass Verdict" is equally a story about L.A.P.D. detective Harry Bosch, Connelly's perennial series hero, and defense attorney Mickey Haller, who debuted in the evocative "Lincoln Lawyer" (2005). The conceit is that Harry and Mickey are half brothers, a situation Connelly established in his first novel, "The Black Ice" ( 1993.) Separated by decades in age, the two are at opposite ends, Harry raised in foster homes after his prostitute mother was murdered; Mickey was a child of privilege. Harry knows who Mickey is; Mickey has no idea about their shared history. Mickey returns to the law when he inherits the practice of a high-powered attorney who was murdered mid-trial defending a Hollywood studio executive accused of killing his wife and her lover. As Mickey tries to come up to speed on the case, Harry investigates the attorney's murder. Connelly sets up the two as competitors, each resentful and suspicious of the other. But for each to succeed, Mickey and Harry will eventually have to cooperate with each other. Connelly's skills at melding plot, character and scenery into a cohesive unit shine in "The Brass Verdict." He spotlights both characters, showing the nuances, flaws and strengths in each. Each is more alike than they know, from the restaurants they frequent to the different view each man's home has of the same area of Los Angeles to their innate sense of honor and justice. "The Brass Verdict" is gold.
Oline H. Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Graham Greene liked to distinguish between his serious novels and those he called his "entertainments," though given the complexity of the man and his work it wasn't always easy for readers to draw the
distinction. Probably Michael Connelly would be the last to compare himself with Greene, but he, too, writes at differing levels of seriousness. If at first encounter he seems primarily an exceptionally accomplished
writer of crime novels, at closer examination he is also a mordant and knowing chronicler of the world in which crime takes place, i.e., our world. Three years ago, within the space of only a few months, Connelly
published two novels notable for the serious business underlying the entertainment. The first, The Closers, published in May 2005, found his noted Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch trying to solve a
"cold case" and thus trying to bring justice to victims on whom the law has turned its back. Then, in October of the same year, he published The Lincoln Lawyer, his first novel told from a lawyer's
point of view, about an ambulance chaser named Mickey Haller, who, in the course of pursuing a lucrative case, finds himself seeking justice for a man he believes he failed to represent fairly when his case was
being heard. Now, in The Brass Verdict, Connelly brings Bosch and Haller together for the first time. Though the novel has some serious things to say about the workings, and occasional failures, of the jury
system, it is primarily an entertainment, and more than welcome purely as such. It's narrated by Mickey, a criminal-defense lawyer who is just coming off a year's self-imposed sabbatical he'd been shot in the gut
and then had become addicted to painkillers in various forms and plans to ease slowly back into his practice. He's no K Street lawyer, as he tells a young man he takes on as his driver: "I haven't had an
office since I left the Public Defenders Office twelve years ago. My car is my office. I've got two other Lincolns just like this one. I keep them in rotation. Each one's got a printer, a fax and I've got a wireless
card in my computer. Anything I have to do in an office I can do back here while I'm on the road to the next place. There are more than forty courthouses spread across L.A. County. Being mobile is the best way to do
business." Mickey's hopes of easing back in are quickly deep-sixed when a lawyer he's known slightly, Jerry Vincent, is found murdered in his car. He and Vincent had worked the occasional case together but
hadn't been close. Still, Mickey is called into the office of the chief judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court and informed that Vincent "filed a motion with the court ten years ago that allowed for the
transfer of his practice to you should he become incapacitated or deceased." Most of the 31 active cases in Vincent's file are minor stuff, but one is huge: "Walter Elliot . . . was the chairman/owner of
Archway Pictures and a very powerful man in Hollywood. He had been charged with murdering his wife and her lover in a fit of rage after discovering them together in a Malibu beach house. The case had all sorts of
connections to sex and celebrity and was drawing wide media attention. It had been a publicity machine for Vincent and now it would go up for grabs." Obviously, Mickey would love to have the case, but first he
has to persuade Elliot who most emphatically is not a nice man to take him on. Once he does, Mickey is off and running. One of the people he runs into is Bosch, who is back on the active force and investigating
Vincent's murder. Bosch wants access to Vincent's past and present case files because he believes the murderer was a client who'd crossed swords with him, but Mickey refuses on the grounds that to release the
information would violate lawyer/client confidentiality. Bosch has 33 years on the force and is "a man on a mission" to seek justice wherever he can find it. He's a tough cop and an honest one, and there
are angry sparks between him and Mickey from the moment they first meet. Mickey would just as soon have nothing to do with Harry Connelly's faithful readers don't have to be told that his real name is Hieronymus,
"like the painter" but there's a problem: The deeper both men dig into Vincent's past, the more suspicions are raised. Vincent had received a lot of money, presumably from Elliot, and much of it
$100,000, to be precise had disappeared. Mickey says Vincent claimed that "he needed the money to buy a boat and that if he made the deal in cash, he would get the best deal and save a lot of money," to
which Harry replies: "There is no boat. The story was a lie." Vincent "bought something," Harry says, "and your client Walter Elliot probably knows what it was" something, for
starters, like a potential juror. "You should take it as a warning, Counselor," Harry continues. When Mickey scoffs, he says, "His lawyer got killed, not him. Think about it. And remember, that little
trickle on the back of your neck and running down your spine? That's the feeling you get when you know you have to look over your shoulder. When you know you're in danger." Mickey doesn't want to be scared, but
as things unfold it appears he doesn't have much choice. One of those things is, how much if at all can he trust his client? Walter Elliot loudly and frequently proclaims his innocence and insists he wants a
speedy trial to clear his name as rapidly as possibly, but though Mickey wants to believe him, experience teaches him to be cautious: "Over the years I had represented and been in the company of a couple dozen
killers. The one rule is that there are no rules. They come in all sizes and shapes, rich and poor, humble and arrogant, regretful and cold to the bone. The percentages told me that it was most likely Elliot was a
killer. That he had calmly dispatched his wife and her lover and arrogantly thought he could and would get away with it. But there was nothing about him on first meeting that told me one way or the other for sure.
And that's the way it always was." If you're beginning to get a whiff of the O.J. Simpson case, well, that's pretty obviously how Connelly planned it. Not merely is the accused murderer a Los Angeles celebrity
and the victims his wife and her lover, but Connelly drops in the occasional teasing reference as well. When Elliot blusters in court that "the sooner Mr. Haller gets to prove my innocence to the world, the
better," Mickey dismisses it as "O.J. 101," and when another lawyer offers to pitch in and help, Mickey tells him: "He wants only one lawyer at the table. . . . He said no dream team." But
all of that is just a little juice on the side; the main story is strictly Connelly's. The essence of it is this, as Mickey puts it: "I was defending a man I believed was innocent of the murders he was charged
with but complicit in the reason they had occurred. I had a sleeper on the jury whose placement was directly related to the murder of my predecessor. And I had a detective watching over me whom I was holding back on
and couldn't be sure was considering my safety ahead of his own desire to break open the case." Yet how does Mickey feel? "I felt like a guy flipping a three-hundred-pound sled in midair. It might not be a
sport but it was dangerous as hell and it did what I hadn't been able to do in more than a year's time. It shook off the rust and put the charge back in my blood." Mickey is pumped, and, take my word for it,
you will be too. Even though the way it ends is just a wee bit contrived, it's still a terrific ride.
Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post
I never met one I didn't like. This paraphase of the Will Rogers quote pretty well applies to how I feel about the fast-moving police procedurals of Michael Connelly. This isn't exactly "police" as the main
character is a lawyer, but close enough... Mickey Haller is defending a studio head who is accused of murdering his wife and her lover in their home on the beach. Haller's been retired for the past year, but upon
the death of a colleague, dozens of on-going cases have been dropped in his lap(top!). The other cases are small in comparison to this double murder, but Haller also has to get his office manager (one of his former
wives), driver (former surfer), and investigator (engaged to former wife) back up and running. And he must refresh his skills and confidence. And what would a Michael Connelly novel be without at least a guest
appearance by Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch, the LAPD detective? So he's in here, too, in a supporting role. This novel went in-depth on how juries are selected and how and why decisions are made on either side
as to who stays and who is excused. Having been on several juries, I have been very curious as to who gets on and who doesn't. (And why I was excused on day four of a jury panel selection.) Now I know. For those of
us who grew up consuming everything courtroom starting with "Perry Mason" to "Law and Order" and "Boston Legal," this was an interesting read. Plus, there are the local details: the
sheriff substation in Whittier, a neighborhood gang in Boyle Heights and an ambush in Topanga Canyon.
Linda Fields Gold, Pasadena Star-News
Michael Connelly writes detective and legal thrillers that elevate the genre with authentic characters, realistic dialogue and knowing details. Rarely does he fall into a common genre trap by
sacrificing truth-in-character to serve his plot, so I was surprised to see two such missteps in the opening chapters of "The Brass Verdict." First, a prosecutor with enough experience and cachet to try a
death penalty case for the Los Angeles district attorney's office forgets to elicit the criminal history of a witness on direct examination before turning the witness over to the defense for cross. Second, this same
prosecutor says, "My career in the DA's office is probably finished" if he loses the case, which is hard to imagine as true for any prosecutor, but especially not for one who has worked his way up to
capital cases. Trials sometimes go south; lawyers go on. After this shaky start, however, the novel builds momentum. Either Connelly never stumbled again, or I was enjoying the story too much to notice. Mickey
Haller, the criminal defense attorney from Connelly's recent best-seller "The Lincoln Lawyer," is our flawed hero. Harry Bosch, the detective from "The Last Coyote" and many other books, is both
Haller's adversary and his guardian angel. By thrusting together these two popular and compelling characters in his hometown setting of L.A., where people are "drawn by the dream" or are "running from
the nightmare," Connelly creates what is nearly certain to be a best-seller. Haller, known as the Lincoln Lawyer because he operates out of his three Lincoln Town Cars rather than an office, narrates with a
jaded and insightful eye. Like Bosch, Haller is a man burdened with demons. Fresh out of retirement and rehab, recovering but still raw, Haller returns to criminal defense work. His friend Jerry Vincent, the
prosecutor whose career went into the toilet after losing the case that opens the book, is now a fellow defense attorney. When Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits his caseload and his clients including Walter
Elliot, a successful movie producer who is charged with murdering his wife and her lover. Elliot, another well-drawn character, might also be connected to Vincent's murder. Everybody has secrets, everybody has
issues, everybody has an agenda, and Connelly expertly unravels his characters along with his plot. Haller and Bosch predictably clash, but they also find that they have some surprising bonds. When I was done, I
wished for another book featuring the two of them, and I bet my wish will come true before too much longer.
Mark Lindquist, The Oregonian
Mickey Haller, criminal defense attorney, works out of the back of a Lincoln town car and is driven around Los Angeles by a client working off legal fees. He has vanity plates on all three of his cars. One of them
reads "IWALKEM."
Michael Connelly introduced Haller three years ago, in the critically acclaimed best seller, "The Lincoln Lawyer." The wait for Haller's return is over, and Connelly once again hits it out of the park in the tightly written, fast-paced and sharply imagined "The Brass Verdict." The last couple of years have been rough on Haller. Coming off a bullet wound, slowed by medical complications and an addiction to painkillers, he's now a recovering addict who hasn't taken a case in two years. His plan to ease back into practice changes when the chief judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court asks him to come by her office. Haller had a long-standing agreement with another criminal defense attorney, Jerry Vincent. The two named each other as seconds, allowing one to cover for the other if needed, an agreement that extends the attorney-client privilege. Unbeknownst to Haller, Vincent long ago filed the paperwork to transfer his practice to Haller in the event of anything untoward. That eventuality has come to pass. Vincent has been murdered. When a stunned Haller arrives at Vincent's office to start going through the files, he finds a pair of LAPD detectives have beaten him to the punch; one of them is Harry Bosch. Haller orders them out, saying a police review of the legal files violates attorney-client privilege. Bosch doesn't much care for such legal niceties and warns Haller that the killer's identity is somewhere in those files. Haller finds Vincent has passed him the case of his life, the defense of Hollywood studio head Walter Elliot. He's accused of killing his wife and her lover, and it looks to be shaping up as the trial of the decade. Jury selection is a week away, and Elliot is willing to retain Haller provided Haller goes forward without delay. It's a tall order, particularly for a guy who planned to ease back into work. But Haller, seeing that the evidence against Elliot is circumstantial, agrees. There is little trust in the interactions between Haller and Bosch; the two need to rely on each other, but they are from opposing sides of the justice system. Bosch is unflinching in his search for justice, and willing to steamroll anyone who gets in his way. Haller, cynical and smart-mouthed, doesn't seem to think much of the concept of justice. He sees his roles as testing the state's case "with the best of my skills," and begins his narrative by telling the reader: "Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie." Bosch is aware, though Haller is not, that the two are half-brothers. And Bosch is not willing to give his sibling, younger by about 15 years, a break. In "The Brass Verdict," Connelly continues to demonstrate his strengths. His characters are fully formed, his dialogue is sharp and he captures L.A. with elan. When Haller describes his city, the passage says as much about the narrator as it does about his home: "Los Angeles was the kind of place where everyone was from somewhere else and nobody really dropped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare. Twelve million people and all of them ready to make a break for it if necessary. Figuratively, literally, metaphorically any way you want to look at it everybody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case." Haller harbors few illusions about his clients. "Over the years I had represented and been in the company of a couple dozen killers. The one rule is that there are no rules. They come in all sizes and shapes, rich and poor, humble and arrogant, regretful and cold to the bone. The percentages told me that most likely Elliot was a killer . . . but there was nothing about him on first meeting that told me one way or the other for sure. And that's the way it always was." While Haller searches for the magic bullet that will seal the defense, Bosch searches for a killer, hoping to apprehend him in time to stop another murder, most likely Haller's. Connelly builds to some breathtaking twists before all comes to a close. And a more perfect end to the maze he has drawn is difficult to imagine.
Robin Vidimos, Denver Post
In "The Brass Verdict" Michael Connelly stages one of those meet-and-greets dear to novelists who write multiple mystery series. He introduces Harry Bosch, his venerable brooding police detective, to
the new kid on the block: Mickey Haller, desperado defense lawyer, the title character in "The Lincoln Lawyer." These two inhabit opposite sides of the justice system. But as Mr. Connelly's closest readers already
understand, Bosch and Haller are brothers under the skin. Incorporating them into the same book is a natural move for Mr. Connelly. It sustains the appeal of "The Lincoln Lawyer," which was a colorful departure from
the police procedural. That book explained how Haller trawled for clients (by advertising on bus benches in high-crime parts of Los Angeles) and maintained an office on wheels, cruising from courtroom to courtroom
in one of his three Lincolns notable for their vanity plates. One of those plates reads "IWALKEM." When Harry meets Mickey it's not love at first sight. It isn't even cordial. "He grinned at me again without any
warmth, giving me that cop's practiced smile of judgment," says Mickey Haller, this book's narrator. "His brown eyes were so dark I couldn't see the line between iris and pupil. Like shark eyes, they didn't seem to
carry or reflect any light." What plot machinations does it take to throw these two together? Deadly ones: Mr. Connelly has to kill someone early in the story. That someone is a lawyer named Jerry Vincent, whom
Mickey was seen outsmarting in a 1992 courthouse prologue. But when Vincent dies, Mickey gets a surprising windfall: he inherits all of Vincent's cases. So he goes to Vincent's office in search of legal records. And
who does he find there? Harry Bosch, the pro who never misses a trick. Harry's investigation of the murder is already under way. Funny thing: Mickey thinks Harry looks familiar. Have they ever crossed paths
professionally? "No," says Harry, with the tough-guy aplomb that comes so readily to Mr. Connelly. "If we'd been on a case, you'd remember me." Although "The Brass Verdict" is primarily Mickey's book, Harry lurks in
its background to keep tabs on Mickey's progress. Harry appears to have the upper hand. ("Bosch smiled like he was dealing with a child.") And even if Mickey wants to keep Harry at a distance, Harry refuses to be
deflected. "He was an annoying guy but somehow he had gotten me to entrust my safety to him," Mickey acknowledges. The war of nerves between these two promises to be a high-stakes battle and the highlight of this
book. It doesn't work out that way. Instead the demands of sustaining dual personalities leaves Mr. Connelly sounding hamstrung. His two protagonists sound so much alike that Mr. Connelly might as well be shouting
into a mirror. ("Bosch! That guy you showed me was just here!" "Haller? What are you talking about? Who?") Something good and less stilted is likely to emerge in future books, now that Mr. Connelly has gotten the
introductions out of the way. "The Brass Verdict" also finds less novelty in Mickey's rogue antics than "The Lincoln Lawyer" did. This time, now that his four-wheeled modus operandi has been explained, Mickey spends
much of his energy dealing with preparation for one big trial. It is his favorite kind of case: the kind with a rich defendant, the head of a Hollywood studio. Mickey's tooling around in a chauffeured Lincoln has
unexpected consequences when he goes to visit this client in the midst of the recent writers' strike and finds himself mistaken for a producer. The client, Walter Elliot, is accused of having gone to his Malibu
beach house and shot his wife and her lover. But even this double murder is fairly tame. Mickey must worry about complications like his client's failure to sound upset on his 911 call to the police after he
discovered the two victims. Still, "The Brass Verdict" has the sneaky metabolism of any Connelly book. It starts slowly, moves calmly, hides pertinent bits of information in plain sight and then abruptly ratchets up
its energy for the denouement. The reader who wonders why this book cares so much about, say, the jury selection process will eventually see that Mr. Connelly had reason to do things this way. Even when Mickey
painstakingly explains how his outline of a case resembles a Christmas tree, as he first establishes a trunk and branches, then hangs bits of evidence all over them, he describes something that proves more
interesting than it may sound. A lot of "The Brass Verdict" boils down to character study, Mickey Haller's strong suit. This wily guy makes his living by second-guessing defendants, prosecutors, judges and witnesses
alike. "It seemed uncomfortably clear that I was being mushroomed by my own client," he says, after realizing that Elliot has been keeping him in the dark. And in a secondary case that somehow involves both diamonds
and surfboards, Mickey is equally good at guessing what either of these very different items is worth. During the hiatus he took between "The Lincoln Lawyer" and this book, Mickey spent time recovering from both a
bullet in his gut and an addiction to painkillers. He was seriously benched. But now, in the midst of this new story, he rebounds with a vengeance. "I'm more than O.K. I'm excited. I feel like in one day I've
suddenly got my mojo back." Like Harry Bosch's mojo, Mickey Haller's is liable to work well for a long time.
Janet Maslin, New York Times
"I don't know where I will go or what cases will be mine," said Mickey Haller at the end of Michael Connelly's 2005 bestseller "The Lincoln Lawyer." Haller a defense attorney who worked Los
Angeles County courthouses out of the back of three Lincoln Town Cars had solved the mystery and been gut-shot for his pains. "I just know I will be healed and ready to stand once again in the world without
truth." "The Lincoln Lawyer" was the first of Connelly's novels to feature Haller as protagonist. Now here's the second, "The Brass Verdict," with an opening that already feels classic. Here
Haller shares his views on the rectitude of the justice system: "Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie. A trial is a contest of lies. And everybody in the courtroom knows this.
The judge knows this. Even the jury knows this. They come into the building knowing they will be lied to."
He's in recovery from addiction to the painkillers he started taking after his near-fatal wounding. He's sour, but trying to pick up the threads of his career when a colleague, an attorney named Jerry Vincent, gets whacked in a parking lot. This turns out to be a lucky break for Haller. He inherits Vincent's workload, which includes an upcoming trial involving a Hollywood producer who stands accused of murdering his wife and her lover. It's the kind of case that Los Angeles loves. Haller sees career-making potential. That's the setup, established elegantly and without fuss. "The Brass Verdict" plays out around two story strands. The big-time producer, Walter Elliot, turns out to be a deceitful and unobliging client, constantly asserting his innocence while doing nothing to establish it. "It was O.J. 101," observes Haller. The murder of Vincent, meanwhile, is investigated by LAPD detective Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch, Connelly's usual hero and one of the great figures in contemporary crime fiction. Attentive readers of "The Lincoln Lawyer" will have gleaned that there is a blood connection between Haller and Bosch, a theme that Connelly develops here, letting us observe the relentless and downbeat Bosch, usually seen in close-up, at more of a distance, through Haller's eyes. It's a nice effect. The two men, so different, come to respect each other and become uncomfortable allies, eventually grabbing dinner together at Dan Tana's. "Bosch looked down at his steak, picked up his knife and fork and cut into it. I noticed he was left-handed. He put a chunk of meat into his mouth and stared at me while he ate it," Haller observes. "He rested his fists on either side of his plate, fork and knife in his grips, as if guarding the food from poachers." Bosch is a wary shark, a man to be afraid of; Haller, more of an outsider, lives by his wits and by fine-tuning his brain to the dissonance of a corrupt system. Critics often compare Connelly with Raymond Chandler, a readily comprehensible bracketing Chandler was, and Connelly is, the signature Los Angeles crime writer of his era but one that, in a way, does neither of them great service. Chandler was a prose-poet of place, a crafter of gorgeous sentences that indelibly evoked mood and locale. Connelly is interested in the machinations of the great bad city, the way power presses and plays out; he writes well, of course, but his grace notes are almost off-the-cuff "I stared out at the waves and thought about how beneath the beautiful surface a hidden power never stopped moving." Chandler had no great command of plot; Connelly is a master of it, teasing out the lines of "The Brass Verdict" in a seemingly effortless way. Chandler was a romantic, Connelly is a realist who gains power through precision and restraint. Here Haller looks at the crime-scene photographs from Elliot's Malibu home: "The death room was completely white walls, carpet, furniture and bedding. Two naked bodies were sprawled on the bed and floor. Mitzi Elliot and Johan Rilz. The scene was red on white. Two large bullet holes in the man's chest. Two in the woman's chest and one in her forehead. He by the bedroom door. She on the bed. Red on white. It was not a clean scene. The wounds were large." It's true, though, that Chandler influenced Connelly, and the theme of "The Brass Verdict" might have been taken from one of Chandler's more famous pronouncements: "Law is where you buy it." Here, as in "Lincoln Lawyer," Connelly sets out his narrative stall not as a hard-boiled police procedural, but as a legal thriller. The novel climaxes in court, where Connelly excels in getting at the all-important dance of jury selection and the mechanics of prosecution. "The lead investigator brings the hammer. He puts everything together for the jury, makes it clear and makes it sympathetic. The lead's job is to sell the case to the jury and like any exchange or transaction it is often just as much about the salesman as it is about the goods being sold. The best homicide men are the best salesmen." By now, Haller thinks he's extracted the truth from the brazen Elliot, who has engaged in big-time jury tampering. But there are twists to come, and Haller will find himself staring in dismay at the floor of the downtown Criminal Courts Building: "It had been scuffed by a million people who had trod a million miles for justice." Connelly has been a publishing brand for a long time, but he's a thoughtful writer, and never a lazy one. He's kept his work fresh and his readers on their toes. All the devices that can seem worn in other writers' hands the estranged wife, the teenage daughter, the assorted sidekicks are again made fresh here by Haller's point-of-view in which cynicism commingles with the determination never to quit. Like Los Angeles itself "The Suitcase City," he calls it Haller is a mixture of light and dark, a flesh-and-blood guy who, as with Harry Bosch, we'll look forward to meeting again.
Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times
When Michael ("You can call me Mickey") Haller cruised onto the scene in Michael Connelly's 2005 novel "The Lincoln Lawyer," the endearingly sleazy Los Angeles criminal defense attorney was conducting
his legal practice from the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car. That made sound business sense at the time, considering his riffraff clientele and slippery work ethic. But after a humbling experience that left him
close to death and addicted to painkillers, Mickey is ripe for reformation.
He gets his shot at redemption in THE BRASS VERDICT when he inherits the practice of a murdered colleague, Jerry Vincent. The big ticket in Vincent's heavy workload is the celebrity murder case of Walter Elliot, a Hollywood film executive accused of shooting his wife and her lover after surprising them trysting at his Malibu beach house. Mickey tears into the defense with breathtaking energy and professional zeal, loathing his client (who continues to hammer out movie deals in the courtroom) but fully believing in his innocence. With his taste for melodrama, Connelly makes a meal out of Mickey's antics in and out of court. If this were no more than a standard legal thriller, it would still be hard to put down. But for all the glee we might take in watching Mickey in action psychoanalyzing the jury pool, shredding the credibility of a prosecution witness or faking civility to a powerful judge "The Brass Verdict" is not just a conventional legal thriller but also a complicated morality play. As Mickey sees it: "Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Clients lie. Even jurors lie." In his cynical view, "a trial is a contest of lies" in which the players tacitly agree to game the legal system, dispensing whatever justice is necessary to keep that system running. Since whoever killed Jerry Vincent is taking the same murderous interest in his successor, there's some justification for Mickey's dubious legal maneuvers. But that puts him on a collision course with every defense lawyer's natural enemy, the chief investigator for the prosecution who turns out to be Harry Bosch, the brooding detective in Connelly's police procedurals. Just for the record, he lies, too. Connelly is a master of plot engineering, and he maximizes the tension between Bosch ("the man on a mission") and Mickey ("the Lone Ranger") through a series of scams and subterfuges so dangerous they could cost Mickey his life or, at the very least, his lucrative case. But after some damaging opening skirmishes, even Mickey, a maverick to the core, has to admit that "we're flip sides of the same coin."
Marilyn Stasio, New York Times
The hook that makes Michael Connelly's latest novel about L.A. defense attorney Mickey Haller so compelling isn't its plot or explosive, if somewhat excessive, finale but the fact that Haller, the ''Lincoln lawyer''
who works from the back seat of a Town Car, finally meets up with Harry Bosch. Connelly set the table for the meeting early on in his justly praised detective series about Bosch, the L.A.P.D. homicide cop who
carries around a heavy heart and acts, figuratively speaking, as our melancholy bridge to a world of crime and darkness. Although the connection between the men is more than a little contrived they're
half-brothers, one a defender of slime balls, the other a guy who will stop at nothing to put evildoers away there's enough electricity in their sparring to overcome any potential mawkishness. The Brass Verdict doesn't carry quite the narrative weight or intricate characterization of the Bosch series, but Connelly Lite is still Connelly: swiftly paced, smart, procedurally sharp and a hell of a lot of fun. Connelly seems as comfortable around a courtroom as he is around a police station, and so The Brass Verdict -- named for street justice dispensed with a bullet -- turns out to be a diverting thriller, if not a redefiner of crime fiction. After the events of The Lincoln Lawyer,
which left him with a destructive taste for prescription painkillers, Haller is considering a return to work when he inherits the caseload of a colleague shot to death in his car. Bosch, it turns out, is
investigating the murder. But what really captures Haller's attention, at least at first, is a sensational case just handed over to him. Walter Elliot, a prominent studio executive, has been charged with murdering
his wife and her lover. Elliot claims he's innocent and demands that Haller believe him. Haller doesn't care about the truth. ''Everybody lies,'' he tells us. ''Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie.
A trial is a contest of lies.'' Maybe Elliot's lying. Maybe he's not. Either way, Haller's job is to defend him, to wait for a lie he can use as a weapon -- and to collect a big paycheck. Such a lucrative,
publicity-laden trial of the century is something a showman can't resist, even if a killer is still at large. But Connelly, much like Bosch, is a moralist: Breaking rules in search of the truth is one thing, but not
caring about right and wrong is unacceptable. And thus Haller learns a lesson, while Bosch makes a sort of peace with their long-dead father, and readers take pleasure in the fact that Connelly has produced his 20th
novel without losing his touch. No lie.
Connie Ogle, The Miami Herald
Michael Connelly has had a string of best-selling crime novels, mostly featuring Harry (Hieronymus) Bosch, a Los Angeles police detective, loner and a man with a grim view of the human scene. In this novel, Bosch
plays a minor but important role. The central figure is Mickey Haller, a criminal lawyer who practices law out of a Lincoln automobile. Haller is unaware that he is Bosch's half brother, a relationship mentioned
briefly in the early novel, "Black Ice." Like Bosch, Haller is disillusioned but expert at his job, which is usually helping guilty people avoid prison. Sometimes he even feels bad about it. In "The
Brass Verdict," slang for a bullet that settles a case, Haller returns after a year turning his personal life into a disaster. Drug addiction and recovery, two divorces and a neglected relationship with his
daughter leave him shaken in his health and self-confidence. But the murder of another criminal lawyer, Jerry Vincent, who left Haller his clients, gives him the opportunity to return to his practice and turn his
life around. One of those clients is Walter Elliot, the celebrity owner of a Hollywood film studio, who is accused of killing his wife and her lover, an interior decorator who had designs on more than the house.
Elliot's $250,000 payment for services will make life possible for Haller, his secretary (and second ex-wife), and the investigators he relies on -- if Elliot decides to continue the relationship. Indeed the first
part of the novel is devoted to the legal steps and tactics involved in keeping clients, taking over a practice and gearing up for the big case. Complications are provided by Bosch and the LAPD investigating the
Vincent murder and the FBI looking for corruption in the judicial system. Minor, unrelated cases are also introduced and they allow us to see Haller's character and legal chops. When the focus narrows to the
preparation for Elliot's trial and the trial itself, further problems emerge, including Elliot's unexpectedly casual attitude toward preparation, threats to Haller and a rumor of jury tampering. Jury impaneling and
the trial are tense and dramatic, showing Haller with all his skills and tricks in operation. But he's not a one-man show. Connelly shows us how important the work of private investigators and a secret juror
consultant can be. In fact the book isn't really about character. Haller is the strongest of the lot and he is far from complex. The others, even Bosch, are there as vehicles for the well-paced, complex plot. You
could call it "Agatha Christie noir" since there are some improbable occurrences, which give final shape to the plot. But unlike Christie, Connelly adds anecdotes and realistic details, some funny and some
horrifying, about lawyers and trials. He even gives use some slang from the mean streets, like the title of this tale. Connelly has all the right stuff for another best seller.
Michael Helfand, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
He examined crime scenes and hunted with detectives, taking on the same mix of urgency and dread they felt. Like his hero, police detective Harry Bosch from The Black Echo and The Concrete Blonde, he
even collected shell casings from police funerals and kept them in a jar. "My editor told me, 'You're now in a city that's a sunny place for shady people,"' Connelly once said. "'In between the sun
and the shade are good stories."' Now Connelly, who left his day job after his chief character Bosch reinvented the Los Angeles police procedural novel, reprises lawyer Mickey Haller in another nuanced,
exactly shaped tale. Every sentence, straightforward and direct, flies to the mark, never leaving a feeling of frustration. Last seen in The Lincoln Lawyer three years ago, Haller is known by that contemptuous moniker because of the well-equipped town car he still makes his travelling office. Haller is a ruthless, hard-nosed defence attorney -- his vanity numberplate is IWALKEM -- whose vocation is to set loose the bikers, clueless wise guys, charming sickos, drug dealers and lower forms of LA life. In his first appearance, Connelly's new hero was haunted by his worst nightmare: the thought of having to defend someone who was blameless. In The Brass Verdict,
Haller is still seen by the cops and prosecutors as only one step removed from his clients, even though he hasn't been in court for a year. Full of trepidation, he inherits the case load of a former colleague,
one-man shop Jerry Vincent, found shot dead in a parking garage, popped three times through the driver's side window. The potential "career-maker" Haller takes from Vincent's files is the high-profile
trial of a movie magnate accused of murdering his trophy wife and her naked lover just days after her prenuptial agreement was fully vested. Haller, almost recovered from an addiction to OxyContin, the painkiller
known on the street as "hillbilly heroin", quickly finds himself entering a crisis of conscience; the physical and emotional trauma in his life has brought him to the point of questioning what he does and
asking himself whether he can still do it. He works on the understanding that everybody in a trial lies, and everybody in the courtroom, including the judge and jury, knows this. Haller believes the trick to winning
cases is patience, "to be the truth in a place where everyone lies", and wait for the one snorter that rips open the case and spills its guts on the floor. But complicating matters, as Haller attempts his
legal and personal rehabilitation, is his brittle relationship with the LAPD's lead detective in the case, the 33-year police veteran Harry Bosch, known to Connelly fans as the flawed hero of 13 highly successful
books. Haunted by all of the cases he has never solved, by every killer or rapist he has never caught, Bosch is the mirror image of Haller. They even live on opposite sides of the Hollywood Hills, with opposing
views of Los Angeles, flip sides of the same mountain. In this novel we see the emotionally bullet- proof Bosch through Haller's eyes, not from the inside, not riding with him for once and sharing his thoughts along
with his music. It's a little disquieting as Bosch has become such a moral presence in the lives of Connelly's readers. But the scenes between the tough cop and the less-than-successful lawyer are engrossing for
those of us who have followed Bosch since 1992, when he was introduced in The Black Echo hunting down the brutal murderer of a Vietnam buddy. We watch Bosch and Haller operate from different sides of the equation of justice. The dialogue and interaction between them is edgy and veiled, and we are never quite sure who is the manipulator. The complicating fact is that Bosch is Haller's half-brother, both sons of celebrated LA criminal defence attorney J. Michael Haller. The brutal circumstances of this case finally bring them together. The Brass Verdict has a lot to say about fatherhood, the awkwardness of brothers being strangers, about redemption and the equilibrium of justice. Connelly does the legal thriller with the momentum of a hard-boiled police novel easily, leaving the one-dimensional John Grisham in the Lincoln's rear-vision mirror. It is also a compelling example of what's become known as "tourist noir", crime books that fatefully bring alive another place. The city is Connelly's other flawed character, just as it was for Raymond Chandler, his early influence. And Connelly's LA is as beautiful and damaged as Chandler's, with moments of hidden grace. What's so beguiling about the Haller novels, though, are the absorbing glimpses into the ethics of the LA legal system, the emotional complexities that underline the defence attorney's commitment to his clients, and the way cops and lawyers are natural- born enemies. Connelly calls this background detail "the stuff", the anecdotes and shortcuts and manoeuvres that bring an abrasive reality to the justice system in which Mickey operates: "The hard-to-put-your-finger-on stuff that makes the world of a book seem real," Connelly says. He's often called Chandler's bastard son, but his writing is far more controlled than that old romantic aesthete's. With Connelly it's not just the way he presents the procedural narrative, the generic plot twists, the moves and counter-moves of dropped clues and sudden insights; it's the straight-out concreteness of his prose that arrests the reader, and his gift for mood, drama and quizzicality. Connelly gives flavour to dialogue by keeping it short and crisp, avoiding the descriptive phrases and never allowing similes or metaphors to run free. And he skilfully avoids the literary aestheticism smarmily creeping into the genre, and the James Patterson-driven hucksterism that dominates so much of the best-selling precinct. Maybe it's about time "the brass verdict", a cop term for a killing that comes down to simple street justice, was applied to the ever burgeoning ranks of mediocre crime writers. Sometimes, as Mickey Haller realises in this classy novel, justice just shouldn't wait.
Graeme Blundell, The Australian
Michael Connelly's "Lincoln Lawyer" Mickey Haller - so called because he operates from his cars instead of an office - made a terrific debut a few years ago. He returns in The Brass Verdict,
just as entertainingly, and the novel has the bonus of a substantial appearance by the Los Angeles detective Harry Bosch, Connelly's most famous creation. Haller, making a comeback to legal practice as he recovers
from a drug addiction, finds himself overwhelmed with work. His colleague Jerry Vincent has just been murdered and Haller nominated to take over all his trials. The homicide detective looking into the Vincent murder
is none other than Bosch. Lawyer and cop co-operate edgily to investigate. If Vincent's death has something to do with a client he was to defend, might that not put Haller's life at risk? Connelly's uniting of his
two main characters works well, even if Bosch seems to have turned a little dour. The Brass Verdict is an exciting, never flagging legal thriller showing Connelly at near his best.
The Times (London)
Michael Connelly's long-running series starring LAPD detective Harry Bosch ranks among the best crime novels of our time. His fiction is notable not only for its deft plotting and crisp style but for its subtle
characterizations and authentic backgrounds, cultural as well as physical. Nor is Connelly afraid to relegate Bosch, his go-to guy, to a supporting role when his plot demands it. Such is the case with this legal
thriller, which stars defense attorney Mickey Haller, first seen in 2005 in "The Lincoln Lawyer." Life has not been kind to Mickey lately. Surviving a gunshot wound left him with a drug addiction that has cost him
his practice and his home life with his wife and young daughter. However, his luck may be turning. Fresh out of rehab, Mickey has resolved to salvage his career although cautiously, one step at a time. He's not to
be allowed that liberty. Instead, he is called back to active duty by L.A.'s chief Superior Court justice. Jerry Vincent, a flamboyant Hollywood attorney and Mickey's former colleague, has been murdered. Judge
Holder wants Mickey to take over his caseload. He would like to decline but doesn't dare offend the judge who is a power-broker in both legal and political circles. Maybe it's not such a bad break, at that, inasmuch
as one of Vincent's cases is the defense of Walter Elliot, a famed movie director who is accused of murdering his wife and her lover. It's the biggest case he's ever had and potentially the most lucrative. Also the
most difficult: The evidence seems damning and his client is strangely unconcerned. As Mickey struggles to build a defense, he crosses swords with Bosch and the FBI as well. He begins to realize that there's more
here than just a simple homicide. With Bosch's reluctant help, he digs deeper and makes a chilling discovery: He may well be the killer's next target, If Connelly's legal thriller has a flaw, it would be length; a
judicious pruning might be beneficial. But that's nitpicking. By any standard plot, characters, suspense this is a splendid book.
Robert Wade, San Diego Union-Tribune
It's always a joy to return to the well-worn characters of Michael Connelly. Between Detective Harry Bosch's sullen, unyielding, experienced view of Los
Angeles crime and the satirical optimism of councilor Mickey Haller's legal defenses lies a well-balanced view of the LA justice system. The blend of the two, found in Conelly's latest thriller "The Brass
Verdict," proves a heady, exciting blend that cooks up not only a fast, furious read... but also a few far-sighted twists to keep readers engaged in the gap between this book's conclusion and the start of
Connelly's next. Haller is the narrator here; after his savvy legal exploitations of 2005's "The Lincoln Lawyer," the likeable attorney with the mobile practice has spent a year beating an addiction to
pain meds, browbeating his own legal acumen, and generally attempting to get back on his game. It takes the murder of a respected colleague - Jerry Vincent - to throw him back onto the court; and as he takes on
Vincent's full caseload, he's notified by the cantankerous detective on the murder case - one Harry Bosch - that he could be the next target. Not a pleasant way to regain momentum; but it certainly stirs the blood.
The star case on the docket is pressworthy - and a cash cow. Defending the morally bankrupt movie mogul Walter Elliot from a double murder charge brings with it notoriety, hundreds of thousands of dollars in hard
cash, and a mystery: despite overwhelming evidence against him, Elliot exhibits calm confidence in his ultimate acquittal. Detangling the facts of both cases - Vincent's murder and the charges against Elliot -
proves to be an undertaking that will require the talents of both Haller and Bosch. Despite the plotline, direct communication between the two characters is sporadic at best; "Verdict" is hardly a novel
bent on exploring their conflicting characters, although when they clash Connelly's dialogue is at its best. This is an action-packed novel that puts its intricate cast of characters in constant motion, offering
clues sufficiently obtuse to keep even the foresights of skilled readers at bay - yet resolves in a satisfying climax of guns and legal wrangling. Along the way - as always - Connelly delivers a pleasant mix of
sarcastic pessimism regarding the system ("Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie.") and interpersonal redemption; the latter always providing adequate foil for the former. That makes
Connelly's books a vivacious, but ultimately pleasant, read.
David Foucher, EDGE (New York)
"When I learned that Connelly was coming out with a second book about Mickey Haller, The Brass Verdict, and this book would include Bosch, I was excited to see how he would mix these two characters, a lawyer and a detective. Connelly didn't disappoint."
BooksLiesandAlibis.com
"This may just be Connelly's finest work yet in the genre."
Soffery.com
"The novel's frantic pace and clever interweaving of the murder of Vincent with that of the Elliott trial making reading The Brass Verdict feel like a rollicking roller coaster ride. Moreover, it is a well-rounded story where one minute we seem to have it all figured out and the next we are at a loss as to what is happening. Eventually the mystery is solved, and Haller comes to some important decisions pertaining to his own life and his desire to continue as a criminal defence lawyer."
BookPleasures.com
"Better than most of the books I've read this year"
CrimeFictionBlog.com "Book of the Week" feature
"So, The Brass Verdict was a fast moving crime novel with just enough "law and order" to keep the reader's attention way past bedtime. If you were to throw David Baldacci and John Grisham into a blender
and sprinkle in a little Hollywood glitter, you'd come out with the sweet tasting stories of Mr. Connelly. The perfect blend of crime solving and courtroom drama. I highly recommend The Brass Verdict. It was
an awesome book."
Bookologists.com
"Connelly is probably the best crime fiction writer today, and somehow he just keeps getting better and better."
BookBitch.com
"Bringing together Michael Connelly's two most popular characters, The Brass Verdict is sure to be his biggest book yet."
BookUpdate.wordpress.com
"Connelly's recreation of heightened reality is always tempered in his personal crucible of taste, never compromising strong identification with his heroes and, as they swipe against their mortality by coming
close to murderers and unsuspected accomplices, maintains the hope that reason and justice will prevail over blood trails of evil."
Critical Mystery Tour
"A heady, exciting blend that cooks up not only a fast, furious read... but also a few far-sighted twists to keep readers engaged in the gap between this book's conclusion and the start of Connelly's next."
EDGEBoston.com
"In The Brass Verdict Michael Connelly has written a brilliant, revealing, relevant and succinct narrative that shows how good a writer he is. I certainly want more."
ReviewingtheEvidence.com
"Once again, Connelly has written an irresistible crime thriller...The Brass Verdict is yet another chilling page-turner from one of the best crime writers out there."
NightsandWeekends.com
"There are so many twists and turns in this book, you'll be quickly turning the pages just to keep up - dying to know what happens next. One of his best to date! A+."
BCFReviews
"Connelly does a good job giving us a gripping legal thriller. I don't usually love legal thrillers, but with the stakes involved in this case, I was excited to find out what happened next."
JacksonDonne.blogspot.com
"Michael Connelly rarely disappoints, and once again he's done a great job of getting the job done."
TheBookFrog.blogspot.com
"The Brass Verdict is one of the very best books I have read in the last few years , bar none."
AWritersPen.com
"Connelly creates terrific scenes with tightly plotted suspense. Consider me a new fan!"
ChristysBookBlog.blogspot.com
"THE BRASS VERDICT, the nineteenth novel from #1 New York Times Bestselling author Michael Connelly, gives definitive proof that Connelly is the most gifted crime writer since Raymond Chandler."
Behind The Black Mask
Good to see that Michael Connelly, probably the best American crime writer of his generation, still knows how to raise his game. In fact, with his 19th novel, he's attempted to do something almost
courageous. Connelly, of course, is best known for giving us the tough but fair LAPD cop Harry Bosch. Long-serving and now past retirement age, Bosch has starred in some 13 thrillers, more than proving his mettle
against hardened criminals, bent cops and sloppy FBI agents. A couple of years ago, Connelly launched a new series, more in the John Grisham legal thriller mould, with rough and ready defence attorney Mickey Haller
working out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car. The first book, The Lincoln Lawyer, was a triumph of plotting, pace and bloody legalese. Now we have The Brass Verdict. And having had a year lying low,
following a nasty case of painkiller dependency the result of being shot Haller is suddenly thrust back into the courtroom. An old colleague, Jerry Vincent, is murdered in the garage outside his office and
Haller is ordered by the county judge to take over Vincent's clients. These include notorious movie mogul Walter Elliot, who's out on bail, accused of killing his wife and her lover. The workload is the least of
Haller's problems. He's got his loyal and super-efficient ex-wife Lorna and her new man PI Cisco, to help sift the cases. More pertinent is the fact that it looks as if Vincent was murdered by one of his clients.
Haller is faced with the prospect of attempting to legally defend someone who now might be wanting to kill him. This is where Connelly takes a leap in the dark and brings in Harry Bosch, who's in charge of
investigating Vincent's murder. Can Haller and Bosch work together to find out exactly what skeletons lurk in Vincent's filing cabinet, and nail a cold-blooded assassin to boot? The initial meeting between Haller
and Bosch is somewhat awkward, and for a while you wonder whether even Connelly's convinced he's done the right thing. But as the plot becomes more convoluted, and the danger more real, Haller needs Bosch just as
much as Connelly does.
The Mirror, UK
Michael Connelly is hard on his heroes. They are always getting shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, kidnapped, blown up or run over. And given the emotional trauma he subjects them to, physical injury is often the least of
it. Mickey Haller, the sleazy criminal lawyer Connelly introduced in "The Lincoln Lawyer" (2005), was so shattered by the end of that novel that it has taken him more than two years to heal. Now, after
recovering from a gunshot wound and the cosmic shock of discovering there are ethical lines he won't cross Mickey is ready to return to the courtroom. As "The Brass Verdict" opens, he's scratching to
get his law practice going again. But when an old colleague is murdered, leaving his thriving practice to Mickey, our flawed hero is suddenly awash in cases. Chief among them is the Hollywood celebrity murder trial
of Walter Elliot, a hot producer accused of shooting his unfaithful wife and her lover. Mickey throws himself into the work, wondering all the while which of the cases he's inherited may have gotten his old friend
killed. That's what Harry Bosch wants to know, too, and it's his job to find out. Harry is the haunted, menacing Los Angeles homicide detective who has somehow managed to survive the violence of 13 of Connelly's
crime novels including "The Overlook" (2007). Harry badgers Mickey, pressing him to give up confidential information about his clients. Worried about his own safety, Mickey doesn't break, but he does bend,
giving Harry more than he should. It was inevitable that Mickey and Harry, Connelly's most memorable creations, would wind up in the same book. Working opposite sides of the law in Los Angeles, they were bound to
run into one another eventually. Besides, as Harry and the reader know, they are half brothers, a fact of which Mickey remains unaware. Although Harry plays a major role, "The Brass Verdict" is Mickey's
book. Harry wanders on and off stage, but Mickey is ever present, narrating the story. The tale is suspenseful and fast paced, except when Connelly gets bogged down in tedious details of legal procedure. As always,
Harry is an avenging angel, seeking justice at any cost. Mickey, on the other hand, still sees the justice system as "a contest of lies" in which the only thing anyone cares about is winning. But since
discovering in "The Lincoln Lawyer" that he is not entirely without ethics, this bothers Mickey now. He still plays fast and loose with the rules, but now he does it in the interest of justice. That makes
Mickey a lot like most other fictional lawyers from Scott Truro's characters to TV's "Shark." He was more interesting when he was a total sleaze, but now that he has discovered he has standards, there's no
going back.
Bruce DeSilva, Associated Press
Harry Bosch is back and this time he may be forced to endure an uneasy alliance with attorney Mickey Haller. Bosch has been a leading protagonist in a number of Connelly's books. We met Haller in Connelly's book
"The Lincoln Lawyer." Now the two of them will be united in Connelly's latest thriller, "The Brass Verdict." Mickey Haller knew attorney Jerry Vincent when Vincent was a prosecutor for the Los Angeles District
Attorney's office and Haller worked as a public defender. They were friends but not bosom buddies. However they stayed in touch, even after Vincent lost a slam-dunk case when Haller tore apart a key witness for the
prosecution. After that case both Haller and Vincent went separately into private practice. Because they held a mutual respect for each other, they agreed to become custodians of the other's cases if one of them
became incapacitated. Being murdered has caused Vincent to be incapacitated. Haller has had his own problems. He was shot by a client a little while back and became hooked on pain killers as he recuperated. As a
result, his practice suffered. Vincent's murder has resuscitated Haller's languishing practice. As Haller reviews the cases he realizes that Vincent was sitting on one of the biggest case in Los Angeles at the time:
the trial of Hollywood producer Walter Elliot, who has been accused of murdering his wife and her lover. When Haller arrives at Vincent's office to review files he finds two detectives going through all of the
cases. Haller immediately tells them to give him the case files and leave the office. The detective more upset by Haller's demand is Bosch. Bosch is not a person to cross but Haller must strive to protect the
attorney-client privilege. However, something that Bosch has said is starting to gnaw at Haller: Clues to the killer's identity may well lie in the files. If that is true, then Haller might also be a target. It may
be prudent to form an alliance with Bosch. There are other, seemingly connected riddles as it also appears that a large amount of money has recently been moved around in Vincent's bank account. As in most Connelly
books the pace quickens the deeper you get into the story. The chapters are mostly short which helps to sustain the pace and the suspense of the story. There are hints that many a surprise may lie ahead for the
reader. This may be one of Connelly's best and most exciting tales. It is sometimes difficult to mesh two of your favorite protagonists there is no problem here.
Stephen M. Bank, The Cary News
A Michael Connelly crime novel is always hotly anticipated. With his latest, The Brass Verdict, he's ramped up the anticipation level even higher by bringing together two of his most compelling
characters. They are LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, star of 14 of the acclaimed author's novels, and defense attorney Mickey Haller, Connelly's newest leading man, whose first starring role was in 2005's The Lincoln Lawyer,
his biggest-selling novel. It's murder that draws them together, as well as the fact that Bosch and Haller have the same father. At the close of Lawyer, Haller was severely wounded while preparing his defense
of a suspect in a vicious attack on a woman. In Verdict, it's two years later, and he's easing his way back into practicing law. He quickly finds himself in the thick of things after his friend, fellow lawyer
Jerry Vincent, is shot to death in his office parking garage and Haller assumes his caseload. When Haller arrives at Vincent's office, Bosch is there searching for murder clues. But what really rocks this story is
not the plot, which is solid and compelling, nor the writing, which, as always, is fresh and clean and stripped of artifice. It's the character studies of Haller and Bosch that give gold luster to The Brass Verdict.
Both are damaged loners which, in this reader's estimation, always make the best protagonists. They're both seeking redemption for their shortcomings while serving up justice as best they can.
Carol Memmott, USA TODAY
What happened? Who did it? Why? Mystery fiction invariably raises these questions, but the answers come -- as in life -- at a premium. And there can be as many versions of the truth as there are characters in a book.
"Everybody lies" is a useful mantra for defense lawyer Mickey Haller, the world-weary but not-yet-cynical protagonist-narrator of Michael Connelly's exciting and intricate "The Brass Verdict."
"Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie." Haller's challenge, as he sees it, is to wield others' falsehoods as weapons on his clients' behalf: "to be the truth in a place where
everybody lies." The Los Angeles lawyer -- whom readers first met three years ago in Mr. Connelly's best-selling "The Lincoln Lawyer" -- has his work cut out for him in his latest case, which finds
him defending a movie-studio chief accused of killing his wife and her lover in the bedroom of his Malibu beach house. The producer seems complacent about his chances in court, despite incriminating forensic
evidence: "He's got this strange confidence in it all turning out his way," Haller notes, "like the Monday morning box office." What does his client know that Haller doesn't? And will the lawyer,
who admits that "guilty people were my specialty," pay too high a price for someone else's deceit? Complicating Haller's efforts is the ongoing investigation of the murder of a high-profile defense lawyer,
whose death sent the case of the studio executive Haller's way in the first place. Probing the dead man's death is Mr. Connelly's other series hero, Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch, seen here through Mickey
Haller's gaze as a man who grins "without any warmth, giving me that cop's practiced smile of judgment. His brown eyes were . . . shark eyes, they didn't seem to carry or reflect any light." Bosch
drops his usually sarcastic manner long enough to convince Haller that, like the dead lawyer, he's also in danger and ought to help the detective flush out a killer. "He was an annoying guy," Haller
observes, "but somehow he had gotten me to entrust my safety to him." The dual investigations of "The Brass Verdict" entwine and resolve in startling ways, in a work filled with
inside-courthouse lore and intriguing revelations about Bosch and Haller alike. Some of the unpleasant truths that Mickey Haller faces bring him to the brink of a self-imposed retirement: "There would be no
more cases after this one." Readers eager for more of this wily lawyer's adventures will no doubt petition to have that judgment overturned.
Tom Dolan, Wall Street Journal
It's a setup straight out of fan fiction: Michael Connelly forces his two heroes, defense attorney Mickey Haller and police officer Harry Bosch, to play nice. When attorney Jerry Vincent is killed, Mickey inherits
his case load including a producer accused of murder. While Mickey prepares a defense, he finds himself helping Harry, who's trying to catch Jerry's killer. "A trial is a contest of lies," Mickey says
early on, and that's good to remember. A slightly hokey ending jars, but The Brass Verdict is brilliantly plotted.
Christian Science Monitor
Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer previously seen in the eponymous book of that name, is back. After a year away from the law due to addictions to painkillers, Haller is summoned to the chambers of the Superior Court
judge, where he learns he has inherited the practice of an acquaintance who has been murdered. Among the clients Haller now represents is a wealthy and powerful Hollywood producer charged with killing his wife and
her lover. When Heironymous Bosch, the detective from the majority of Connelly's books, approaches Haller to act as a decoy in the investigations, Haller finds himself again out on a very thin branch. Final word:
Connelly has teamed his two most popular characters and built an engrossing and tightly knit plot around them. The author is incapable of writing a mediocre story, but sometimes he writes one even better than the
last.
Peter Mergendahl, Rocky Mountain News
Much of what makes Michael Connelly's mystery novels so enjoyable is how sympathetic Connelly is to his heroes' perspectives, even when they contradict his other heroes. When Connelly writes about crime reporter Jack
McEvoy, he rails against uncooperative cops. When he follows FBI agent Rachel Walling or LAPD detective Harry Bosch, he records their gripes about newshounds and lawyers, and their respective frustrations in dealing
with the local authorities and the feds. And when Connelly focuses on criminal attorney Mickey Halleras he does in his latest novel, The Brass Verdictthen all his characters' past rants about crook-coddling
shysters go out the window. When The Brass Verdict opens, Haller is making tentative plans to return to his practice after taking a long time to recover from a gunshot wound suffered at the end of Connelly's
bestseller The Lincoln Lawyer. Haller's plans are accelerated when his colleague Jerry Vincent is murdered, and Haller is assigned all of Vincent's open cases, including the highest-profile murder trial in
Hollywood. Meanwhile, Harry Bosch is sniffing around, investigating Vincent's murder and impeding Haller's attempts to prepare his defense of a splashy independent-film producer. The irony? Bosch and Haller are
half-brothers, though only Bosch knows the truth of their relationship. And though their connection has little to do with The Brass Verdict's plotwhich involves European mobsters, showbiz arrogance, and
various levels of institutional corruptionthe fraternal hook between two of Connelly's recurring characters reinforces his vision of a symbiotic justice system, where even the opponents are inadvertently in league.
As often happens with Connelly mysteries, The Brass Verdict's story weakens as its resolution approaches, once it all becomes a matter of revealing who's who and assigning everyone a fatesome apt, some not. But until the requisite chases and confrontations, The Brass Verdict fascinates with its thousand little procedural details, from how a law firm's billing system works to how lawyers skirt the line between clever advocacy and unethical behavior. The novel's title is a slang term for a bullet fired by anyone frustrated with the bureaucracy and double-checking of law enforcement. But in Connelly's world, a well-crafted legal filing can have just as devastating an effect, and can also assure that justice is doneafter a fashion.
Noel Murray, The Onion
All hail the return of Mickey Haller, alias "The Lincoln Lawyer." A few years back, author Michael Connelly took a break from his series starring Los Angeles homicide detective Harry Bosch to give us
"The Lincoln Lawyer." That tale starred Haller, a Los Angeles lawyer whose clients are maybe too guilty. Now, in "The Brass Verdict," Haller returns. As the book opens, Haller inherits the
caseload of a defense lawyer who has been gunned down by a person or persons unknown. Haller gets to work on the biggest case, defending a movie mogul accused of murdering his wife and her lover. But Haller gets
interrupted by a homicide detective working the lawyer's murder. And yes, the detective is Bosch. With that, the tale spins off at dizzying speed, with Connelly artfully turning the steering wheel every which way.
True, the plot veers off the road of credibility. But Connelly has so much skill, especially in describing the cynical tricks of the defense lawyer's trade, that readers will happily stay along for the ride, which
eventually turns full circle. At book's end, Connelly tosses in a tangential surprise. It's no big deal, except it suggests that we'll see still more stories co-starring the Lincoln Lawyer and Harry Bosch. And
that's good news indeed.
Harry Levins, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie. A trial is a courtroom of lies. This cynical verdict on the American justice system opens Michael Connelly's new thriller. The view belongs to
the narrator of the novel, Mickey Haller, a character first introduced in Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer. In describing his role as a defense attorney, Haller tells us that his job is to wait for the lie he
can grab on to and forge like hot iron into a sharpened blade. He then uses that blade to rip the case open - without mercy or conscience. "That's my job," Haller explains: "To be the truth in a place
where everybody lies." When Hollywood lawyer Jerry Vincent is murdered in his parking garage, a judge assigns Haller to Vincent's pending cases, including the sensational murder trial of Walter Elliot, a movie
mogul accused of murdering his young wife and her lover. The trial has garnered major media attention, much like the frenzied Hollywood murder trials of O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake and Phil Spector. Haller is an
unusual attorney who conducts his legal business in his Lincoln Town Car - hence the previous book's title, The Lincoln Lawyer - rather than an office. There are nearly 40 courthouses throughout the sprawling 450 square miles of Los Angeles County, so Haller finds it advantageous to work out of his car while on the go. A former client works off his legal fees by acting as chauffeur, and Haller sits in the back, working on the phone and his laptop computer. He keeps his current files in the trunk and a wireless fax on the front passenger seat. Haller meets with his clients in court and in jail. While preparing for Elliot's murder trial, Haller is contacted by Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch, the homicide detective investigating Vincent's murder. Bosch warns Haller that he may also be targeted by Vincent's killer, and Haller cooperates with the detective up to a point. Walking an ethical tightrope, Haller agrees to act as bait to draw out the killer. Bosch, Connelly's popular long-running series character, is named after the 15th-century artist, who, in Connelly's words, created "chaotic, world-gone-mad paintings." Bosch, an orphan, Vietnam veteran, and veteran detective, sees the world in much the same way as his namesake. Bosch is presented in this novel from Haller's point of view. Unlike Scott Turow, Lisa Scottoline and other lawyers who write legal thrillers, Connelly is a former Los Angeles Times reporter, not an attorney who can rely on a legal background. But as a reporter, he has done his research and interviewed lawyers in order to bring a gritty realism to the novel. Connelly said he met a lawyer at a baseball game who told him he worked out of his car, and from that conversation Mickey Haller was born. While Bosch, a police detective, works for the prosecution, and Haller for the defense, the two characters are flip sides of the same coin. Connelly has said he wanted to give readers a glimpse at the back doors of the American justice system. In pairing his lawyer and detective characters, he offers a suspenseful tale of a sensational celebrity murder trial, as well as a peripheral murder investigation. As for the title, it will be obvious to lifelong students of crime and crime fiction. Most other readers will have to read this suspenseful tale to the end to have its meaning revealed.
Paul Davis, Philadelphia Inquirer
What's better than one of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch or Mickey Haller best-sellers? How about a blockbuster featuring both. Although Harry touts 13 stories over Mickey's 2005 debut, The Lincoln Lawyer,
fans can't get enough of Connelly's defense attorney who works from the back of his Lincoln Towncar. Haller inherits the case load of his career in The Brass Verdict. In the two years since he was shot,
Haller has had a slow recovery, hobbled by an addiction to pain pills. Twenty-one new clients, including a high profile murder case, might just be the break Haller needs. Or is it? Two weeks before sleazy movie
mogul Walter Elliot's murder trial, Haller's former colleague and Elliot's lawyer Jerry Vincent is gunned down in his car. L.A. homicide Detective Harry Bosch wants to know why. But Haller isn't keen on giving out
client information with the case of his career in the headlights. As Haller digs through his new cache of clients, Bosch baits the Lincoln lawyer from the sidelines. Haller must match wits with the egotistical
Elliot, who'd rather dine with Hollywood royalty than worry about the execution of his wife and her lover. Connelly paces The Brass Verdict through Haller's eyes, giving the novel a more legal edge. Relying on his ex-wife and her biker lover for research, Haller sets his sights on proving Elliot's alleged innocence. But Bosch knows something Haller hasn't had the time to realize: Haller could be next on the attorney hit list. The Bosch/Haller scenes are electric; sparks fly when these two cunning defenders trade barbs. Fans will delight in the family skeletons department. Connelly's courtroom scenes are equally strong. Revelations hit home like drunk punches as Haller's eyes are opened to layer upon layer of deceit. Bosch sits poised as Haller's avenging L.A. angel with a mournful sax tune seeping from his Ipod. Just when you think you figured it all out, a brass verdict - true street justice - is delivered. Bosch and Haller's verbal slugfest is golden, but Connelly's plotting ultimately steals the show. Forgotten fragments manifest into full-blown carnivores, chewing up everything you thought was true. Ratchet The Brass Verdict into your reading chamber. You can almost smell the cordite.
JC Patterson, The Clarion-Ledger
Michael Connelly is one of America's finest writers, in any genre. His new novel, The Brass Verdict, brings together two of his most popular characters - the hard-bitten, haunted Los Angeles cop, Harry Bosch,
and the aggressive defense lawyer, Mickey Haller. Haller's former law partner, Jerry Vincent, is murdered - and even as Haller suddenly inherits Vincent's multimillion-dollar law practice and an obscenely wealthy
client, he's more interested in finding the killer. The story echoes one of Humphrey Bogart's most famous "Maltese Falcon" lines: "When a man's partner is murdered, he's supposed to do something about
it." At first, I was disappointed that Bosch is the supporting character here; he is my favorite series protagonist in current crime fiction. But Haller kept me interested as the two men form a reluctant team,
especially when Bosch sets up the lawyer as living bait. And the final twist - after all the bad guys are accounted for - will make you shake your head in wonder
Les Roberts, Cleveland Plain-Dealer
Connelly's two series' protagonists long-running homicide detective Harry Bosch and the newcomer, defense attorney Mickey Haller form an intriguing team in Connelly's latest thriller. Haller, who first appeared
in 2005's "The Lincoln Lawyer," takes center stage. After a year getting sober he's thinking about going back to work when he suddenly inherits a murdered colleague's entire case load including the
high-profile homicide of a celebrity producer's wife and her lover. The producer, Walter Elliot, has been charged with the killings. Bosch is the lead detective in the shooting death of Elliot's original defense
attorney, Michael Vincent, and Haller finds him going through Vincent's files when he arrives at the dead man's office to take over. There's the usual cops and lawyers hostility, spiced up by the fact (known to
Bosch, not to Haller) that the two are half-brothers. Although Haller puts a stop to the file rifling, there is give-and-take between them once Bosch points out that, absent an obvious motive for Vincent's murder,
Haller could be next. Meanwhile Haller is scurrying to get up to speed on the Elliot case. Trial date is less than a week away, Vincent's laptop and case notes were stolen when he was shot and Elliot, insisting on
his innocence, has refused a continuance. From the ins and outs of jury selection, witness lists, cross-examination, "magic bullets" and "everyone lies" philosophies, Connelly keeps the legal
dance hopping. His prose is very clear and direct, making the legal complications all the more dazzling. The plot itself is fairly simple, even predictable, but Connelly fleshes out a classic framework with personal
depth and unexpected detail. Readers will look forward to the next stage in the development of Haller and Bosch.
Lynn Harnett, Portsmouth Herald
This could have been cute, but crime novelist Michael Connelly ducked most of the obvious pitfalls when he brought together two characters from earlier books: longstanding, world-weary homicide detective Harry Bosch
(featured in more than a dozen books); and his half-brother, defense attorney Mickey Haller (The Lincoln Lawyer). Connelly is a superb storyteller, solid but unflashy, letting out information the way you'd
lay out fishing line, then reeling you in, another pleased reader. The crime that Connelly hangs his story on is the brutal murder of Mitzi Elliott and her lover. Mitzi's husband Walter -- a Hollywood power broker
-- is arrested and charged with the murder, but then his lawyer is murdered and Haller is handed the case by a judge. The detective working the case is Bosch. In past novels featuring Bosch, Connelly's tone is
troubled, dark, and serious to the point of murky self-examination. In this second book featuring Haller, the tone is lighter and the character is somewhat less introspective, which is not to say unself-aware. It's
more that Haller doesn't deep-drill into his soul the way Bosch does; his self-knowledge is more akin to panning for gold, catching what he can. Haller has been out of the picture for more than a year, recovering
from a serious gunshot wound and then getting off the pain pills he'd become addicted to. This should trigger fears that Haller could, perhaps, branch off into self-destruction, but we never get a sense that he is
ever in any real danger of falling off the wagon. In fact, overall there is a tone that seems to promise that things will work out. The book lacks sweaty-palm tension -- with the exception of one scene early in the
case, and that turns out to be a ruse. Of course, Bosch and Haller believe that it's more than likely the lawyer's murder is related to the Elliott case so there is a chance that Haller will be targeted as well.
While largely in the background -- Haller's voice narrates -- Bosch casts a long, dense shadow. He hovers over everything, his dark countenance sobering every scene. He is a dog on the hunt, locked onto something
that remains hidden from the rest of us. Readers with good memories know that Bosch is aware Haller is his half-brother, but that Haller hasn't a clue about their relationship. That information lurks in the
background like the 800-pound gorilla, yet when it does come out, very late, it lacks energy or impact. The whole question is mostly clumsy, perhaps reflecting Connelly's own ambivalence, and the book flows smoother
when any hint of their blood relationship recedes into the wallpaper and it is just two guys working different sides of the same crime, and this their dance as they take turns leading the other to the solution.
Randy Michael Signor, Chicago Sun-Times
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