One day out of nowhere, Mickey Haller gets an unexpected call from the LA District Attorney's office regarding the reversal of the murder conviction of Jason Jessup. Twenty-four years before, Jessup, a truck driver, had been convicted of the murder of Melissa Landry, a 12-year-old girl. However, modern DNA analysis of a semen stain left on the girl's underwear has been found to not be a match for Jessup. But when the LAPD discovers the source of the semen stain—namely, the girl's stepfather—they elect to try Jessup for murder again.
The problem for the DA's office, though, is that the politically sensitive nature of the Jessup case leads them to believe they need an independent counsel. Enter Mickey Haller, veteran defense lawyer, who accepts a temporary special prosecutor appointment to try the Jessup case. Haller, on unfamiliar ground, recruits his ex-wife Maggie McPherson to join him in the prosecution and gets the cop he trusts the most, his brother Harry Bosch, to be his lead investigator.
Tropes present in this work:
- Cigarette of Anxiety: Sarah Landry has to take a smoke after Bosch and Maggie explain why they're there. She explains that it's her only addiction left. She smokes another in a courthouse bathroom during a break in her testimony.
- Continuity Nod:
- The book opens with Mickey at the Water Grill restaurant, reflecting that the last time he was there, it was with a client who turned out to be a cold-blooded double murderer. That was a scene from The Brass Verdict.
- When remembering the day Melissa Landy was murdered in 1986, crime scene tech Izzy Gordon notes that it was her first day on the job and she was training with her supervisor, Art Donovan, now "long dead". Art Donovan was a crime scene tech who worked with Harry Bosch in several early Bosch novels, last appearing in 1997's Trunk Music.
- Double-Meaning Title: The Reversal is both Jason Jessup's murder conviction being overturned and Mickey Haller being a prosecutor instead of a defense attorney for a change.
- Gave Up Too Soon: After the defense's last strategy fails, Jessup is so certain he'll be convicted he decides to flee, and he's shot and killed by police. He never finds out that one of the jurors would have voted for his acquittal, thus forcing a mistrial. Mickey and Maggie agree that the DA probably would have dropped charges rather than take a third shot at trying Jessup.
- The Internet Is for Porn:Maggie: Jessup is right-handed according to a sample of his writing in the files, and studies have shown that with right-handers masturbation is almost always carried out by the dominant hand.
Harry: They’ve done studies on that?
Maggie: You’d be surprised. I sure was when I went online to look for this.
Harry: I knew there was something wrong with the Internet. - Knuckle Tattoos: Jessup has knuckle tattoos that say "FUCK THIS."
- The Law Firm of Pun, Pun, and Wordplay: Harry Bosch meets with FBI Agent (and old flame) Rachel Walling at an office that the bureau had recently used in a money-laundering sting operation. The office was set up as the law firm of Franco, Becerra & Izturis. Bosch thought the name was clever.
- Only Known by Their Nickname:
- Mickey and Sticks have known each other for so long the former no longer remembers the latter's real name.
- When Sarah checks a list of potential character witnesses who might give statements against her, she sees several names she doesn't recognize because they belong to people she only knew by their nicknames.
- Parental Incest: Sarah Landy's father was abusing her.
- Plot Hole: How is Jason Jessup, imprisoned for twenty-four years, driving around Los Angeles without a license? One could Hand Wave this as the LAPD deliberately letting him wander per Mickey's strategy, but the book makes clear that Jessup's daytime activities are public knowledge and are being reported in the newspaper.
- The Scapegoat: Haller cites this as why he's confident he'll never be invited back to the other side of the aisle after Jessup's rampage. Once the dust settles, the DA will be looking for someone to blame (and preserve his political interests and ambitions). It'll be Haller, since he was the one who authorized Jessup's OR in the first place.
- Shout-Out: A bailed-out Jason Jessup goes to see Shutter Island.
- The Stool Pigeon: One of the witnesses against Jessup in his original trial was one Felix Turner, a jailhouse snitch—who turned out to be a professional snitch who used a PI on the outside to get him the info he used to fabricate testimony.
- Suicide by Cop: How the Jessup affair eventually plays out, as Jessup refuses an order to come out with his hands up and comes out shooting at the LAPD instead.
- Switching P.O.V.: Alternating chapters have Mickey Haller telling his story in first person and Harry Bosch's story in third person POV, as is the usual case with their novels.
- The Unreveal: Harry Bosch develops a theory that Jessup is a Serial Killer and even thinks he knows where Jessup may have buried his victims. We never find out if Harry is right.
