The Brass Verdict Literary Elements

Crime Thriller/Legal Thriller

Los Angeles, California. After a brief flashback to 1992 in the first few chapters, the present-day setting of the narrative is situated within the context of law enforcement and the judiciary system in 2007.

The first-person narrator of the novel is defense attorney Mickey Haller.

The tone of the novel is expressed in the very first lines of Haller’s narration: “Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie.” This is a deeply cynical attitude by itself, but the choice to specifically make this expression of cynicism the first words to confront the reader with only serves to intensify the effect. The mood follows forth from this establishment of tone to suggest that systemic corruption is endemic in the American way of life.

Protagonist: Mickey Haller. Antagonist: Walter Eliott.

The conflict at the center of the plot is ironically one which is established between Haller and his client early on and only continues to increase as new information about Elliott comes to light.

There are at least two and as many as four different climaxes in the book. The most significant is the moment that Walter Eliott confesses his guilt to his attorney and Haller is more emotionally overcome by his client’s display of pride in the commission of the deed than he is by the admission of having done the deed. The secondary climax is Haller revelation that he and the LAPD detective who has been investigating the crime are half-brothers who share the same father.

The antagonism between Haller and Elliott is partly instigated by attorney’s reaction to his client’s seemingly irrational overconfidence that he will be acquitted. At one point, this growing discomfort forces Haller to press the issue and the result foreshadows essential information that will only be revealed much later; “You are too confident, Walter. It’s like you know you are going to walk.”

“Walter Elliot had been suspicious about his wife.” This simple assertion proves to be one that wildly underestimates the extent to which Elliott was deeply disturbed by the behavior of his wife.

Judge Judith Champagne confers a nickname upon Haller as a result of the ringtone on his cellphone suddenly going off in the middle of official court proceedings. The ringtone is the William Tell Overture and the nickname Haller earns is the Lone Ranger. Multiple references to Haller being known as the Lone Ranger proceed from that point which directly connect his attorney status to the Lone Ranger being a figure committed to pursuing justice. The allusion to the ringtone may be a confusing non-sequitur for readers not familiar with the history of that classical musical composition also serving as the character’s theme song on radio and television series.

The book’s title is imagery is explained during a conversation between two characters in which one informs the other that “the brass verdict." It is imagery that will eventually prove applicable in the case at the center of the story.

The cynicism expressed in the opening page by Haller places the judicial system within a context which is paradoxical to the oath sworn by every witness to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: “A trial is a contest of lies. And everybody in the courtroom knows this. The judge knows this. Even the jury knows this. They come into the building knowing they will be lied to. They take their seats in the box and agree to be lied to.”

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Haller buys a backpack with a logo featuring the name of the store “Suitcase City” emblazoned across a line of mountains in a way resembling the famous Hollywood sign. He is moved to repurpose the name metonymically to describe the condition of existence in Los Angeles, describing it as “the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really dropped anchor…a transient place.”

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