THE BRASS VERDICT (Lincoln Lawyer/Mickey Haller #2) (audiobook) by Michael Connelly

    When Harry Met Mickey

 Published by Hachette Audio in 2008.
Read by Peter Giles
Duration: 11 hours, 54 minutes
Unabridged

 At the end of The Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller was gutshot, a horrific injury and one that is difficult to survive, let alone recover from.  At the beginning of the second book in the series, Mickey Haller is not practicing law. Due to his injury, Haller has developed an addiction to pain killers and has been in rehab getting clean. As he descended into addiction he has driven his ex-wife farther away and made that relationship even more difficult.

 Despite the drugs, Haller was able to recognize that he was in no position to practice law. Then, one day out of the blue he gets a phone call from the chief judge on Los Angeles. A fellow defense attorney named Jerry Vincent has been murdered and Mickey Haller is supposed to take on all of his cases. Haller and the Vincent used to cover for one another on occasion and they listed one another as the attorney who would cover for them in case of emergency in all of their contracts with their clients.
So, Mickey Haller goes from an attorney with no cases to an attorney with multiple cases, including the biggest case in Los Angeles. Haller has inherited the case of Walter Elliott, a Hollywood producer accused of shooting his wife and her lover multiple times after he found them naked together in their oceanview home.

 As Mickey starts to get up to speed with his cases he meets the detective assigned to solve the murder of  Vincent - it is none other than Harry Bosch, the main character in Michael Connelly's other series.

 Bosch and Haller clash several times, each ones gets the best of the other only to be bested the next time they butt heads.

 Haller soon discovers that some vital information was stolen from Vincent when he was murdered and he puts his whole defense team to work trying to figure out what could be missing and if it was the reason Vincent was killed.

 As the date for Walter Elliott's trial looms Haller learns that his client may be hiding much more than he thought and he may even have some answers for the questions swirling around the murder of Jerry Vincent. Haller finds that he must walk a tightrope between helping the police and protecting his clients and not getting killed himself...

 Some might claim that this book dragged. Instead, the reader gets to see Haller deal with multiple new cases and figure out how some of them might just tie together and give him some sort of clue as to what is really going on. 

 I like Peter Giles as the voice of Mickey Haller. As I noted in another audiobook review, Giles captures that smooth courtroom delivery perfectly. His readings as Harry Bosch were so-so, but that is to be expected - they are very different characters.   

 I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

 You can find this book on Amazon here: The Brass Verdict: A Novel

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