THE BRASS VERDICT

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 resourceful—by 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.