The Brass Verdict: A Novel (Mickey Haller)
by Michael Connelly
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Book Reviews of The Brass Verdict: A Novel (Mickey Haller)
Book Review: The Lincoln lawyer is back in business!
Summary: 5 Stars
Mickey Haller, the criminal defense attorney who had put his law practice on hold while he recovered from the aftereffects of having been shot in the gut -- which included a ferocious painkiller addiction -- is summoned by the chief judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court. In her chambers she informs him that he has inherited the active cases of lawyer Jerry Vincent. Vincent was murdered the night before.
Mickey knew the man. Fifteen years ago, Mickey won the acquittal of double murderer (yes he was guilty) Barnett Woodson by proving a key witness of Vincent's was lying. Vincent's career with the district attorney's office went up in smoke, but he rebounded and took up more lucrative defense work. Over the years, Vincent and Mickey acted as each other's backups.
Now, Mickey heads over to Vincent's office. Mickey himself has never been an office man; he prefers working out of the back seat of one of his little fleet of Lincolns while being chauffeured to clients. But now, Vincent's office is his. Arriving there, he faces off with two LAPD detectives already pawing through confidential client files. One happens to be Detective Harry Bosch, a fellow at the center of quite a string of crime fiction in his own right.
Among Mickey's new clients is Walter Elliot, the publicity-splashed Hollywood producer who is scheduled to go on trial for the bloody shooting deaths of his wife and her lover. Mickey must convince the man to retain him. Elliot wants above all for his trial to proceed on schedule so he can be exonerated and get back to his movies. Tamping down his better judgment, Mickey promises no postponement. He really wants this big, lucrative case.
So begins Michael Connelly's flawlessly paced courtroom and crime novel, The Brass Verdict....
Walter Elliot is no street hood Barnett Woodson. He's a willful and powerful businessman with an agenda, a timetable, and vast resources. Mickey has his hands full getting Elliot to cooperate fully in his own defense. Yet, Elliot's cocky confidence in Mickey's abilities to secure a "not guilty" verdict seems odd given the strength of the prosecution's case against him. At least at first. Then Mickey, a man who inherited his famous father's incisive legal instincts, thinks he's found ammunition that could blow the prosecution's case sky high (much as happened in the old Woodson case). The unfolding of Mickey's defense of Elliot, despite his problems with and doubts about the defendant, makes for riveting, cagey courtroom drama.
Don't forget Jerry Vincent either. Harry Bosch won't. He and Mickey gradually form a not entirely trusting covert alliance to try to find Vincent's murderer. When they have said and done all that can be to identify and apprehend said killer or killers, the reader may nod and say, "I knew that" about one major piece of the puzzle. But this bit of formulaic obviousness doesn't spoil the overall plot's inventive robustness.
Connelly, the non-lawyer, doesn't load up his novel with constant legal terms. He concentrates on delivering an intricate story that keeps the reader guessing. He also never forgets to make his characters vividly human and to include the personal side. The best payoff of this kind in The Brass Verdict stands in the penultimate chapter. A poignant connection comes out into the open there. Savor this subdued but perfect moment in time because it is over too soon and almost certainly won't be repeated.
In Chapter One, Mickey counsels the reader, "Everybody lies." (Does he know Dr. Gregory House?) He continues, "The trick if you are sitting at the defense table is to be patient. To wait. Not for any lie, but for the one you can grab onto and forge like hot iron into a sharpened blade. You then use that blade to rip the case open and spill its guts on the floor." He adds the kicker: "That's my job, to forge the blade. To sharpen it. To use it without mercy or conscience. To be the truth in a place where everybody lies."
Mickey is brilliant at his job. The question is whether his bravado about "without mercy or conscience" will actually reflect his true nature. Intellectually, he is more than capable of forging and using that blade. But as a matter of moral constitution? Regardless of client guilt or innocence? Read The Brass Verdict and find out what really makes the Lincoln lawyer tick.
Book Review: Duplicity
Summary: 5 Stars
Review based on the Kindle edition
Near the end of the Brass Verdict, Mickey Haller, standing on his deck and looking over the garish lights of the Sunset Strip, watches the Sun rise over the mountains to the east of Los Angeles and begin to illuminate the valley below. He would like to share the moment when it first lights the Pacific with his daughter Hayley, who has spent the night--one of the eight times he is able to see her each month--but she has to be off to school and assures her father that "it happens every day." Well, yes--and no. This dawning day will bring only the last of a series of "dawnings" for the reader of Michael Connelly's latest novel, the most revelatory of all, one that proves yet again that Mick Haller is, in the words of Harry Bosch, "one smart lawyer," and one that proves that Michael Connelly has an ever-fertile imagination, and one that makes the reader hope for more Mickey Haller/Harry Bosch collaborations.
Since other reviews have amply explained the story of this book, I'm going to take a stab at matters lying nearer to the core, since I think of Connelly as a serious writer worthy of the task. He isn't the only writer in this genre to concentrate on theme, character, irony, symbolism and other concerns of the literary novelist, but he has done so seriously and consistently from the very start. There are the tunnels through which Bosch groped in Vietnam in the very first book, The Black Echo, tunnels through which he continues to grope in his post-war life. There's the coyote in The Last Coyote, a surrogate for Bosch, himself: an outcast, misfit, and tenacious survivor.
Connelly takes what seems to me to be a calculated risk with his most well-developed character in The Brass Verdict. It's the first time the reader sees Bosch through the eyes of another character--Haller, in this case--and for most of the book he comes off as cold, hard, and unsympathetic. His eyes are almost the only physical feature described, and they are a bit peculiar and off-putting. In short, the character is not "fleshed-out" at all. I chose to believe that Connelly wishes the reader of the Bosch novels to forget what he knows about the character and see him anew, through Haller's eyes. Why else the shock of presenting seasoned Bosch fans with this rather two-dimensional character? Until the end of the book, that is. Because at the end, Bosch is revealed, and in more ways than one. Wait for it. That last scene, with Haller and Bosch on Haller's deck, watching the sunrise, is worth the price of admission.
Without a doubt, this is Mickey Haller's story. This "Lincoln lawyer" has a complex history. As he observes, "It seems like the most important things in life were the easiest to break apart." And his life has indeed been a story of breakage. He has survived, more or less, two failed marriages, the first of which he is still trying to salvage. And he has seen a successful law career ended by a bullet to his gut and pain killers that left him addicted. But in spite of his rickety hold on sobriety, and his clear-eyed acknowledgement that "everybody lies," Mick Haller believes in people. He salvages the life of a client who is a thief and a fellow recovering addict, though he really can't say why he's doing it. He is loyal to a fault to his second ex-wife and her lover, who is also his investigator. And he is, as Bosch has said, a very smart lawyer. Rather, he is an uncommonly perceptive human being. Over and over, he pieces together the same information that the reader has observed and arrives at brilliant and completely unexpected conclusions.
Oh, yes; the theme: everybody lies. It's the first sentence of the novel, and it's repeated, throughout. Connelly creates a world of appearances in The Brass Verdict, but as Shakespeare was the master of proving, appearances are not always, or even often, reality. Mickey Haller's ability to perceive the truth amid a welter of false appearances is the stuff of Connelly's plot. It's just that simple. And it's just that puzzling. Such is the making of a very good mystery novel, a very good character study, and a very good observation on the nature of things as they are.
Highly recommended
John Pendley
Book Review: "A trial is a contest of lies. And everybody in the courtroom knows this."
Summary: 5 Stars
This terrific follow-up to The Lincoln Lawyer, featuring troubled defense lawyer Mickey Haller, also includes famed police detective Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch, who has been a hero in thirteen previous Connelly mysteries. Though Haller and Bosch work on opposite sides (one on defense and one on prosecution) and even live on opposite sides of the bay, they are thrown together against their wills and must cooperate if they are going to see justice served. Haller has just returned to law practice after a hiatus in which he has dealt with his demons and his addictions, the result of a long, painful hospitalization and several complex surgeries after he was "gut shot."
Haller has inherited the entire caseload of former prosecutor Jerry Vincent, who became a defense attorney after Haller beat him soundly in a court case. Vincent has been murdered in the garage beside his office, his laptop and case notes missing, with the biggest case of his career due for trial in less than a week. Walter Elliot, head of the highly successful Archway Pictures, is being tried for the murder of his wife and her lover, and he refuses to agree to a continuance, even though Haller, new to the case, recommends it. This case, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, soon begins to overlap with another of Vincent's cases--one taken pro bono, and not in any of Vincent's files or on his calendar--a complete "mystery case" to Haller.
As he works, Haller relies on stalwart friends and associates, all of whom show their own personalities here as they support Haller and try to keep him from backsliding under stress. His first former wife, Maggie McPherson, a prosecutor, needs to be reassured that he is stable enough to be a father again to his daughter. His second former wife, Lorna Taylor, still works with him, though she is now living with Dennis Wojchiechowski (Cisco), Haller's investigator. Harry Bosch, who is investigating the Jerry Vincent murder for the police, frequently overlaps with Haller regarding issues in Vincent's cases, and they occasionally meet. Though they are alike in many ways, their hostility is often palpable.
As Haller looks for the "magic bullet," the "get-out-of-jail-free" card that would clear Walter Elliot of a double murder, he must explore issues of bribery, jury tampering, fraud, police misconduct, organized crime, legal malpractice, federal crime, and even international crime--not to mention murder, including potentially his own. The novel, written in exceptionally clear prose, keeps all the complications from becoming overwhelming as the author recreates the legal one-upsmanship of a case going to trial. Connelly draws the reader in and increases the tension by making him/her an "expert" on the legal importance of events to the Elliot case. Exciting, beautifully crafted, filled with non-stop action, and always centered on achieving justice, this novel is completely satisfying--one that has it all. n Mary Whipple
The Lincoln Lawyer : A Novel
The Overlook (Harry Bosch)
The Last Coyote (Harry Bosch)
The Concrete Blonde (Harry Bosch)
The Harry Bosch Novels: The Black Echo, The Black Ice, The Concrete Blonde
The Harry Bosch Novels Volume 2: The Last Coyote, Trunk Music, Angels Flight
Book Review: Courtroom Thriller with Harry Bosch Portrayed as He Is Seen by Others
Summary: 5 Stars
Do not read this review or this book unless you have at least read The Lincoln Lawyer and The Last Coyote. If you have read both of those, you'll probably think The Brass Verdict is a four-star book. If you've read The Lincoln Lawyer and all of the previous Harry Bosch novels, you will probably think The Brass Verdict is a very interesting five-star character study buried in a series of intriguing mysteries.
Characters, to me, are what make or break mysteries. If I like a character or find the character to be interesting, I look forward to each book teaching me something new about the character. In the best mysteries, the characters grow into something more than before which makes the progression interesting to contemplate.
The best writers save some things to surprise readers. Most such surprises are like a little firecracker going off. There's big bang for a second, but it doesn't mean much after a few minutes. Michael Connelly has the ability to set off what seems like a little firecracker that makes you see the whole world differently. It's a great gift, and he employs it in The Brass Verdict. But you need background from the earlier novels to appreciate the beauty of what he does.
I have a problem in reviewing this book. I can't tell you about the two most interesting aspects (what the title means and revelations about the two leading characters in The Brass Verdict). But I can tell you that these aspects will pique your interest and leave you with many fascinating things to think about after you finish the book.
Here's what I can tell you. Mickey Haller is a sadder and a little wiser version of the man who was the hero of The Lincoln Lawyer. He has had a serious run-in with drugs, and he doesn't have his empathy back yet. As a result, he can think clearly about legal issues . . . but human relations are difficult for him. The emotional environment for him is flat . . . which makes reading the book a little flat . . . but that's part of the Connelly's plan.
Michael Connelly also puts Harry Bosch in the background of this story. That's something that you should know before you decide whether or not you want to read the book. There's a good reason for doing this that you won't understand until you finish the book. But you should appreciate that you'll gain new insights into Harry's methods and effectiveness by getting a sense of what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of his investigations.
As the book's blurb reveals, Mickey Haller hasn't been doing criminal defense work since The Lincoln Lawyer events for about two years. When a fellow solo practitioner is executed in his parking garage, Mickey inherits Jerry Vincent's cases . . . including a multiple six-figure defense of a Hollywood mogul who is accused of killing his wife and her lover. Mickey's life is shaken to the core, but he decides he wants to get back in the saddle.
There's only one problem with being a criminal defense attorney . . . you are usually defending guilty people who did the crimes. You have to watch out that you don't get in their way . . . or you may become a victim as well.
Wanting to help with the Jerry Vincent investigation, Mickey Haller provides what information and cooperation he can to Harry Bosch. Bosch isn't too impressed, and soon Mickey finds Bosch putting on unnecessary pressure as well.
Can Mickey hold it all together? Will he become a victim, too?
Ultimately, Mickey has to face up to a question that his daughter asks: Why can't he do what mommy does, and prosecute bad guys?
It's gritty and exciting and filled with many mysteries. It's a keeper.
Book Review: Michael Connelly Plays It Safe with "The Brass Verdict"
Summary: 3 Stars
Michael Connelly is a safe bet. Pick up one of his crime novels and you're going to get a tight-plotted caper with colorful characters, riveting dialog, and a satisfying conclusion.
That's why Connelly is a blockbuster author and New York Times bestseller. He's consistent - consistently good.
But after more than 20 novels, this consistency may be starting to become something worse: predictable. Case in point: "The Brass Verdict."
"The Brass Verdict" is the second novel in Connelly's new series about Mickey Haller, a defense lawyer in Los Angeles. Haller is an interesting character - a former addict to painkillers who keeps his emotions tightly contained. He's a brutal realist, but with a soft spot for certain hard luck cases.
The character (and the series) shows a lot of promise. Connelly has a great eye for criminal case detail and understands how to create courtroom suspense. The best parts of "The Brass Verdict" are all in the courtroom.
It's unfortunate that Connelly didn't feel confident enough to allow Haller's case to unfold. The story is a good one. Haller, recently out of rehab, inherits the caseload of a fellow defense attorney. One of the clients is a rich and powerful movie mogul accused of murdering his wife and her lover.
Walter Elliot is an arrogant, oily tycoon with a likability score of less than zero. But did he shoot and kill two people?
Haller isn't interested in guilty or innocence - only in building a case that can win. This razor-thin line that Haller walks as he investigates the homicides makes for a fascinating look at his character and at how our criminal justice system works.
This is how Connelly opens the novel: "Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victim lies. A trial is a contest of lies. And everyone in the courtroom know this."
If only Connelly let Haller build his case and kept us in the courtroom as he argued and maneuvered. The novel would have been even better.
Unfortunately, "The Brass Verdict" gets the same treatment as Connelly's first breakout bestseller "The Poet" (1996). There are more twists here than an Olympic high-platform dive - and in the end - there's just too many to keep the story believable.
Part of the problem is the presence of L.A. Police Detective Harry Bosch. Bosch is Connelly's primary series character (and if you haven't read any of the books featuring Bosch - you really should).
Bosch really doesn't have a role in "The Brass Verdict" - except as a crossover concept (and for a surprise coincidence at the end). Bosch's investigation into Elliot's alleged double homicide is more of distraction than an addition. It keeps us out of the courtroom - where the real action is.
But even with Connelly's decision to use Bosch and play twister at the end - "The Brass Verdict" is better than most of the mainstream crime fiction out there. You have to hand it to Connelly - his formula for consistency keeps him selling books.
It would be nice to see him take some risks and move away from his modus operandi, but then again why mess with success?
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