Connelly's reputation as a top rank crime writer is due to his many books featuring dour LAPD detective Harry Bosch. However, in recent years, he's introduced a new protagonist: fast-talking criminal defense attorney Micky Haller (see The Lincoln Lawyer), who just happens to be Bosch's half-brother. In The Brass Verdict he had them team up, and here he does so again, with alternating chapters.The story opens with a big twist, as Los Angeles District Attorney wants to hire Haller as a prosecutor for a case involving the retrial of a man held 23 years for the abduction and murder of a young girl. It seems that new DNA evidence has emerged, and pretty much everyone thinks he's going to walk (and sue the city for wrongful imprisonment).

Having confounded expectations right off the bat, Connelly then has Haller insist that his ex-wife (Maggie "McFierce" who's also shown up in previous books) act as his co-counsel, and that Bosch is assigned as his investigator. This sets the wheels in motion for a page-turner (in all the best senses of the term), as Haller and Bosch wade into the old case and try and come up with something that'll put the guy back on death row. Haller's specialty is being able to anticipate all the dirty tricks the defense is going to try and use, while Bosch's speciality is getting into the head of the perp and tenaciously pursuing all leads. We switch back and forth between the half-brothers each chapter, with Haller's in first-person and Bosch's in third-person, a technique I quite liked. It's kind of dual-procedural, half legal, half police -- all entertaining. To be sure, some of the legal shenanigans seem pretty unlikely, and the story relies on an improbable number of people key to the original trial being dead. But it's hard to quibble with such details when you're being so completely entertained.