Another take on ‘Brass Verdict’

  You have to like courtroom procedural novels to get the most enjoyment from “The Brass Verdict” by Michael
Connelly. Really, really like them.
  Really like them.
  “Verdict” is part of a series of novels that features Connelly protagonist Hieronymus Bosch, a police detective. But Bosch takes a back seat in this novel to another of Connelly’s favorite characters, the oh-so-flawed attorney (isn’t that redundant?) Mickey Haller. Haller has taken a year off to deal with an addiction problem and is just trying to dip his toe back into the practice of law when a colleague is murdered and his entire caseload is turned over to Haller. Haller inherits a number of interesting cases, including a high-profile murder case.
  I have to say the novel’s resolution — which involves not so much the resolution of the murder case but an ancillary issue that arises because of it — was not something I would have predicted, and I was quite pleasantly surprised to be led astray by so many red herrings. But the events leading to that point were so heavy with the minutia of the practice of law and the more arcane aspects of the courtroom that getting through it felt like a slog at times.