BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
(Print: 11/3/2014; 9781455524181; Little, Brown and Company; 388 pages.)
Audio: 11/4/2014; Hachette Book Group; 9781478984481; Duration 10:11:38; 9 parts.
(Film/TV: Probably is or will be incorporated into the Bosch series.)

SERIES:
Harry Bosch, Book 17 (27th novel by the author)

MAIN CHARACTERS:
Harry Bosch – LAPD Open-Unsolved-Unit Detective
Lucia Soto – Rookie Open-Unsolved-Unit Detective

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
Another excellent story involving crime, power, greed, and hubris. And I don’t think we were told, but Harry’s new partner, Lucia, is doubtless as beautiful as she is competent, since those are the types of females Harry attracts.
One of the things I love about this series that I haven’t mentioned yet is how I see (or, hear, actually) acknowledgements to people whose names I recognize, either directly, or derivatively, as characters in the stories. This particular book is dedicated to Detective Rick Jackson, a name I hear occasionally in the stories as an excellent senior detective.

AUTHOR:
Michael Connelly (7/21/56). As noted in previous reviews, Amazon has all this to say about Michael: “Michael Connelly is the bestselling author of over thirty novels and one work of nonfiction. With over eighty million copies of his books sold worldwide and translated into forty foreign languages, he is one of the most successful writers working today. A former newspaper reporter who worked the crime beat at the Los Angeles Times and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Connelly has won numerous awards for his journalism and his fiction. His very first novel, The Black Echo, won the prestigious Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. In 2002, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the movie adaptation of Connelly's 1998 novel, Blood Work. In March 2011, the movie adaptation of his #1 bestselling novel, The Lincoln Lawyer, hit theaters worldwide starring Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. His most recent New York Times bestsellers include Fair Warning, The Night Fire, Dark Sacred Night, The Late Show, Two Kinds Of Truth, The Late Show, The Wrong Side Of Goodbye, The Crossing, The Burning Room, The Gods of Guilt, The Black Box, and The Drop. Michael is the executive producer of BOSCH, an Amazon Studios original drama series based on his bestselling character Harry Bosch, starring Titus Welliver and streaming on Amazon Prime. He is also the executive producer of the documentary films, SOUND OF REDEMPTION: The Frank Morgan Story and Tales Of the American. He spends his time in California and Florida.”
This is Michael’s 27th novel and we are still behind in reading them all.

NARRATOR:
Titus Welliver (3/12/1962) Ahh! Titus is a Pisces! Yes, I can see that now.
This is the first Bosch Novel Titus has narrated, and interestingly, this book came out 4 months before the Bosch series hit TV screens via Amazon. It’d be interesting to know which came first. I noticed Publisher’s Weekly gave an unkind review of Len Cariou with the last book he narrated, “The Drop”, alluding to his sounding too old for the main character. I have no idea if that is why he didn’t narrate this one, but my imagination is surmising that Titus came along at a fortuitous time to become Bosch in all realms. Titus is no novice in either realm, having numerous television as well as audiobook credits.
So, Titus doesn’t change voices with different characters (at least not to MY ear), and now I really can’t recall how many of my favorite narrators do. Jim Dale is the only one I can say for certain. It sometimes makes it hard to know which character is speaking since we don’t have the visual prompt of a new paragraph, or some kind of “exclaimed Harry” text for each character. But I prefer this to a male narrator softening his voice to an inaudible whisper for female characters, so I’m good with it. As with other narrators for Connelly’s books who don’t pronounce things sometimes as I feel they should, what I have to wonder is, did Connelly mean for “Lucia” to be pronounced as Titus does, “Lusia”, or was it meant to be, “Luchia”? Just wondering.
(After-note: I'm sorry. I was wrong. While I didn't notice much difference in the character's voices in this book, the next one and the one after that Titus definitely does different voices--in fact his Haller voice sounds hauntingly like Matthew McConaughey. I can't tell you if it's my imagination, or if it was intentional, but with all of the McConaughey references in the stories after his depiction of Mickey Haller in the movie, Lincoln Lawyer, it's certainly fitting. And it's definitely not that Titus read my little review here and thought, "Oh, I should be doing different voices" since the subsequent books came out before my little review here, but would that it were so.

GENRE:
Mystery, fiction, suspense, thriller

LOCATIONS:
Los Angeles, Calexico

SUBJECTS:
Cartels, police procedure, cold case

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter 2
“It seemed to Bosch to be a form of torture heaped upon torture. Carazon was hunched over the steel table, her bloody and gloved hands deep inside the gutted torso, working with forceps and a long-bladed instrument she called the “butter knife.” Corazon was not tall and she stood on her tiptoes to be able to reach down and in with her tools. She braced her hip against the side of the autopsy table to gain leverage.
What bothered Bosch about the grisly tableau was that the body had already been so violated for so long. Both legs gone, one arm taken at the shoulder, the surgical scars old but somehow raw and red. The man’s mouth was open in a silent scream. His eyes were directed upward as if beseeching his God for mercy. Deep down Bosch knew that the dead were the dead and they no longer suffered the cruelties of life, but even so he felt like saying, Enough is enough. Asking, when does it stop? Shouldn’t death be the relief from the tortures of life?”

RATING:
I gave this book 5 stars. Another captivating episode ( )

Crime

insufferably pompous Harry ( )

One of the strongest entries in this series.

With Michael Connelly you know right away that you are in the hands of a craftsman in both the smooth telling of a complex story and the crisp, perfect handling of language that makes that possible.

Harry Bosch, a grizzled Los Angeles police detective, and his new partner, 28-year-old Lucia Soto, have to work two cold cases at once. Things get complicated fast, especially when it turns out Soto knew the victims in one case.

Another complication enters in when Harry realizes that yet a third case might be tied to the one that Soto has personal feelings about. Connelly does not just relate an intricate plot. He also brings the characters to life as people with histories and relationships. The growing respect and affection between Bosch and Soto propels the novel as much as the discovery of what motivates the actors in the crimes they investigate.

An amusing note is that Connelly introduces a couple of real life police detectives into the novel as minor characters. He also thanks them for their invaluable help in writing the novel, which does explain some of the detectives' investigative techniques. This novel is recent, and Connelly is able to describe some of the many ways that technology has changed police work. One of the cases took place in 1993 and the other in 2004, so the author can meditate on how police work has changed not only from the last century but from the last decade.

A disappointment is the author's too easy assumption that anyone who flies a Don't-Tread-on-Me flag is necessarily an "-ist": a survivalist, extremist and/or racist (mostly "and"), when it ain't so. That flag denotes heritage, not hate. (Of course, extremism is in the eye of the beholder; to a Marxist, a moderate conservative is going to look like an extremist.)

In the author's page at the end of this book, the pending TV series based on Bosch (eponymously titled) is mentioned as if the series will actually come to fruition, but, so far as I know, there is only a pilot episode, available at amazon.com/prime, and there probably is not actual energy to bring more episodes to TV. I hope I am wrong about this. Titus Welliver, who plays Bosch in the pilot, is clearly perfectly cast to play this character. I could hear his voice throughout this novel. ( )