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It's been over a year since the events of "The Lincoln Lawyer" and Haller is looking to get back into the world of lawyering. He gets to do so in a big way, when a fellow lawyer is killed and leaves his practice to Haller. At stake are 30 or so cases, including a big one where a Hollywood movie mogul is accused of killing his wife and her lover. Circumstantial evidence and a killer (no pun intended) pre-nuptual agreement put the husband firmly as the prime suspect, but Haller figures his old friend had a "magic bullet" that was the key to the case. The only problem is his old friend was killed by an unknown attacker and had his laptop stolen.

As Haller begins to work on the case, he makes one alarming discovery after another. He crosses paths with Bosch, looking into the murder of the lawyer and Bosch drops hints that the FBI may be interested in both the murder and the big case. For a while, Haller can't figure out why but slowly begins to connect the pieces and find out the bigger picture.

Connelly is no stranger to creating good mysteries with an element of suspense to keep the pages turning. In "The Brass Verdict," he raises his game to the next level, creating a lot of plot threads that come together in a satisfying way. As the various plots and conspiracies unfolded, I found myself more and more intrigued by what was happening and curious as to where Conelly would take me next. And when he delivers the final twists and turns of the novels last 100 pages, they are easily some of the most satisfying of any mystery novel I've read in a long while. (Probably second only to this year's "Careless in Red" by Elizabeth George).

A lot of this can be credited to Connelly's decision to bring back Haller. Haller is an extremely flawed protagonist. He's not a perfect man and Connelly wisely doesn't portray him as such. He's haunted by demons from his past and driven by the desire to be a better man and laywer now. This comes into conflict each time he meets with his client, who is obviously hiding a lot of things from Haller, including just how far he'll go to retain his freedom. Haller's slow whittling away to the truth is compelling and fascinating.

The only part I didn't like is that, at the end of the story, we get a force family connection between Haller and Bosch and the story strongly suggests this is the end of Haller's career. I know we sort of had that at the end of "The Lincoln Lawyer" and we saw Haller come back here. Hopefully Connelly will find another story worthy of Haller's return in the future. ]]>