Review by Booklist Review
In his compelling Harry Bosch novels, Connelly typically puts the onetime Vietnam tunnel rat turned LAPD detective into one tight spot after another. Here Harry is assigned to investigate a murder that threatens to set the city ablaze. African American attorney Howard Elias, who has become rich and famous suing LAPD for brutality, is murdered on the eve of his biggest case. Thousands of cops are likely suspects, and with the memory of the Rodney King incident fresh, police brass are looking for any kind of spin control they can find. Harry, last seen in the outstanding Trunk Music (1996), is promptly saddled with "assistance" from the Internal Affairs Division, the FBI, and LAPD's independently appointed inspector general, who Bosch soon learns was Elias' lover. To torque up the pressures as Bosch doggedly sorts red herrings and pursues the killer, Connelly has Harry's year-old marriage unraveling while he's trying to quit smoking. Two-thirds of the way through the book, the focus of the investigation changes to a celebrated child murder case and rich and powerful Internet pedophiles. Connelly makes all the necessary connections, but Bosch fans may feel that the author works too hard to create the tightest rat hole yet. Even so, Connelly at less than his best still merits attention. --Thomas Gaughan
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Connelly's novel follows series hero Harry Bosch's investigation into the murder of an African-American defense attorney who made a career of courtroom victories at the expense of the Los Angeles Police Department. This installment in the series is especially dark, and narrator Peter Giles's reads in a voice that echoes with the dry croaking of a lifelong smoker-something that establishes a noirlike mood from the get-go. The narrator ably matches Bosch's downbeat mood, shifting from anger at having to deal with racism, not just in his city but within the ranks of the LAPD, to weariness, sadness, and frustration at his inability to stop the disintegration of his marriage. Giles sands some of the roughness from his voice and pitches it slightly higher for the book's female characters, like the detective's soon-to-be-separated wife and his partner, Kiz Rider. But there's still an edge rough enough to remind us we're not listening to an Agatha Christie cozy. A Grand Central paperback. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A lawyer prominent for filing lawsuits against the Los Angeles Police Department that charge brutality and racism in its treatment of African Americans is murdered, and it is up to detective Harry Bosch to conduct an investigation that will seem fair to all sides. He uncovers an unusually tangled web of crime and corruption reminiscent of the complexity seen in James Ellroy's fiction. Connelly's (Blood Work, Audio Reviews, LJ 7/98) story is fascinating as a police procedural, a psychological portrait of the memorable Bosch, and a morality tale about the ways legal, political, and social forces can create unintentional conspiracies. In the end, most of the perpetrators are punished, though in unexpected ways, leaving only Bosch with the painful burden of the truth. Smoothly read by Dick Hill, Angels Flight is immensely satisfying as both a mystery and as serious literary fiction. Highly recommended for all collections.ÄMichael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The murder of a high-profile civil rights lawyer is just the trigger for another far-ranging case for L.A. cop Harry Bosch (Trunk Music, 1997, etc.). Howard Elias was widely known as the man who made a good living by suing the LAPD. So now that he's been shot, along with inoffensive cleaning woman Catalina Perez, aboard an otherwise empty inclined railway car, cops all over the city are cheering. What's not to like? wonders Bosch. Only two things: the likelihood that Elias was helped to his grave by one of the hundreds of officers now toasting his death, and the certainty that the public will scream coverup and react in riotous fury if Bosch turns up anybody but a fellow cop as a suspect. Under pressure to satisfy Deputy Chief Irvin Irving, who's determined to put his own Rainbow Coalition p.r. spin on every development, and to work peacefully with the Internal Affairs officers he's been saddled with, Bosch soon focuses on Elias's latest client: Michael Harris, the scruffy suspect who maintains that his confession in the murder of pre-teen Stacey Kincaid had been beaten out of him by cops who jumped on their first slim lead that came their way. But even as Bosch is turning up evidence that indicates Harris might be innocent after allmany sordid, though unsurprising, revelations herethe net is closing around his former partner Frankie Sheehan, a Robbery-Homicide detective on the Harris case who'd already caught the eye of Internal Affairs when he killed a suspect in an earlier case. Bosch sweats to exonerate his old friend and find a substitute killer, but Deputy Chief Irving, who can't forget O.J. and Rodney King, is just not that interested in getting Sheehan off the hook. Reliable suspense on a grand scale, though the halfhearted attention to the suspects and Harry's perfunctory domestic troubles, as well as the lack of a powerfully mysterious center, make this the most routine of Connelly's eight world-class thrillers. (Author tour)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
