Click Here To Purchase The Brass Verdict

Author: Michael Connelly

ISBN: 10: 0-446-54080-3: 13: 978-0-446-54080-3

The opening words of Michael Connolly’s most recent novel, The Brass Verdict just about sums up the theme of this riveting novel: “Everybody lies. Cops Lie. Lawyers.lie. Witnesses lie. A trial is a contest of lies. And everybody in the courtroom knows this.” 

Attorney Mickey Haller just had thirty-one cases dropped into his lap when he inherited a lucrative criminal law practice from his colleague, Jerry Vincent who was gunned down in the garage of his office building. Haller is a recovering drug addict who hadn’t been practising for a year and now he was back in the saddle raring to go.

Among the cases was one involving a well-known powerful movie mogul, Walter Elliott who was accused of murdering his wife and her lover in their Malibu home. It was called the trial of the decade and there were high stakes attached to it.

Haller’s first challenge occurs when he enters Vincent’s office and finds two detectives rummaging through various files, which as he knows is a “no no” as it infringes upon the attorney client confidentiality. One of the detectives was Harry Bosch who is a seasoned pro who didn’t scare easily and who was not at all concerned with ethics. What concerned Bosch was that among Vincent’s files was probably the answer why someone wanted him dead. There were threats against Vincent from clients who were not particularly happy about the outcome of their cases and he made a detailed record of exactly what was said and who said it. It was these threats that the detectives were pulling together.

 However, after some back and forth quarrelling, Bosch and his partner leave the office but not before Haller asks if their paths had crossed before. And to this, he smiles and replies, no and if they did he would have remembered him. We will be hearing more from Bosch as the story unfolds. 

The second challenge Haller faces is reconstructing the thirty-one cases Vincent was working on. Apparently, when Vincent was murdered, his laptop containing vital information was stolen as well as a file concerning one of his clients. Helping Haller put the puzzle together is a team consisting of a legal assistant, Lorna Taylor, an investigator Dennis Wojciechowski known as Cisco, and a driver, Patrick Henson, who was also a client accused of jewellery theft. Incidentally, Haller liked working out of the back seat of his Lincoln.

Taylor figures out Vincent’s filing system and is able to pull out the active files and with this in hand she succeeds in creating a master calendar in order to point Haller in the right direction, the key in any lawyer’s professional life.

Taking the focus off Vincent, Haller then proceeds to develop his defence strategy pertaining to the Elliott trial. And it is here where Connelly is at his best as he meticulously explores the mysteries of defending a client before the criminal courts from selecting the jury to the placing of that all- important element of doubt in the minds of the jurors. All is not exactly as it seems when you have a defendant who is quite sure he is going to be exonerated of murder and who is not very interested in delaying the case. Moreover, what was the key element strategy of Vincent’s defence? This has gone missing. Could Vincent have been involved in some hanky panky and why was the FBI snooping around?  

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.

Characters are believable particularly Haller and here is where Connelly shows that he has done his homework and knows his way around the criminal courts.

In addition, Connelly gives his readers much to think about pertaining to the wheels of justice wherein readers may ask themselves if The Brass Verdict is any indication of some of the hanky panky that sometimes transpires during criminal or even civil trials? Remember my first line above. How much lying does actually go on in a trial?