The Brass Verdict

The Brass Verdict is a novel by the American writer Michael Connelly, published in 2008. It is the nineteenth of his novels and the second to feature the Los Angeles criminal defence attorney Mickey Haller, who was introduced in The Lincoln Lawyer.

Since the events of the earlier book, Haller has been recuperating from his injuries and from an addiction to painkillers that followed them. He is drawn back into practice when an old acquaintance, the defence attorney Jerry Vincent, is murdered, and Haller inherits his caseload, which includes the high-profile trial of the Hollywood executive Walter Elliott, accused of murdering his wife Mitzi and her German lover. Haller persuades Elliott to keep him as counsel by promising not to ask for a postponement, which leaves him nine days to prepare. Meanwhile the LAPD detective Harry Bosch is investigating Vincent's death, and he warns Haller that Vincent's killer may be coming for him as well, which is how the reluctant lawyer is brought into cooperation with the police inquiry.

Connelly's novels share a Los Angeles and a cast that moves between the police and the courts. This one puts a defence attorney and a detective on the same case from opposite sides, and the courtroom work and the murder inquiry run against each other. Haller had been introduced in The Lincoln Lawyer in 2005, while Bosch had been appearing in Connelly's books for years before that.