Connelly named his central character after a 15th-century painter of scenes of sinful human failure. Photo / Suppled

Connelly named his central character after a 15th-century painter of scenes of sinful human failure. Photo / Suppled

Everybody lies at a trial, bestselling crime writer Michael Connelly declares in his new book. Cops, lawyers, witnesses, victims, even the jury. And the worst thing is everybody knows this.

Connelly accepts this might seem a little cynical but it's the view which shapes the approach of his protagonist Mickey Haller.

"By design it starts with a cynical view of the justice system," says Connelly. "And Mickey Haller, well he's a bit cynical and weary too." But not too drained by a corrupt legal system that he cannot steer a path towards a place of redemption.

Haller is one of Connelly's two great fictional characters; the other is the Los Angeles Police Department detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch. In The Brass Verdict Connelly brings them together: Haller, the crafty defence lawyer whose office is the backseat of one of his three Lincoln Town Cars, and the brooding, relentless Bosch.

"They are both in many ways quite similar but on opposite sides of the aisle - they're flip sides of the legal coin," says Connelly. The hard-bitten cop trusts no one, and definitely not Haller.

Haller, on the other hand, wants to shine a bit of light into the dirty corners of justice: "He's going to tell you how it really works," says Connelly. On the way readers get to glimpse the ethics of the American legal system and the moral complexities defence lawyers face with their clients.

It is through half-brothers Bosch and Haller that Connelly, a former crime reporter, starts to pick away at the deep and often dark heart of LA. When Haller goes to the Malibu mansion where his client, a Hollywood producer, was accused of murdering his wife and her lover, the lawyer looks out at the pounding Pacific: "I stared out at the waves and thought about how beneath the beautiful surface a hidden power never stopped moving."

The idea of a mobile defence lawyer came from a chance encounter at the LA ballpark Dodger Stadium with one David Ogden, an LA County lawyer who worked from his car.

"Makes sense," says the author from his home in Tampa, Florida. "There are 40 courts and 400 square miles of freeway in Los Angeles. It's the only way to cover them."

And so he put Haller in a limo and made him trawl for clients by slapping ads on bus shelters in the wild parts of town. One of the cars had the number plate "IWALKEM".

Bosch comes from an entirely different place. For a start there's that name. "I studied art at college and the starting point of all this is the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch," says Connelly, now 52 and an entrenched publishing brand. Bosch's 15th-century paintings are vivid works of debauchery and sinful human failure, alongside splendid visions of paradise.