Review by Booklist Review
"Child cases haunted you. They hollowed you out and scarred you. There was no bulletproof vest thick enough to stop you from being pierced." LAPD detective Harry Bosch gets pierced in the worst way this time. After a doctor out walking his dog in Laurel Canyon finds a human bone, forensic anthropologists unearth the rest of the skeleton and piece together part of the story: a 12-year-old boy was murdered around 1980 after being viciously abused for most of his brief life. Bosch picks up the trail, identifying the boy but encountering both investigatory and bureaucratic roadblocks as he attempts to close in on a suspect. Meanwhile, Bosch strikes up a romance with a rookie cop--against department regulations--and quickly finds himself in the midst of a personal and professional crisis. It doesn't help that, as he learns more about the dead boy, he keeps hearing echoes from his own troubled past. After spinning his wheels just a bit in his last two novels, Connelly regains his stride here. Like Ian Rankin's John Rebus, Bosch never stops feeling the bruises he has acquired through multiple encounters with evil. His view of the world darkens with each case, and he feels more and more powerless: "True evil could never be taken out of the world. At best he was wading into the dark waters of the abyss with two leaking buckets in his hands." Harry wanders deeper into that abyss this time than ever before, and it drives him to a shocking decision that will leave series fans reeling. Hard-boiled cop fiction at its most gripping. --Bill Ott
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Harry Bosch is at the top of his form which is great news for Connelly fans who might have been wondering how much life the dour, haunted LAPD veteran had left in him. His latest adventure is as dark and angst-ridden as any of Bosch's past outings, but it also crackles with energy especially in the details of police procedure and internal politics that animate virtually every page. What other crime writer could make such dramatic use of the fact that the front door of a house trailer swings out rather than in, creating problems for a two-man team of detectives? Who else would create to such credible narrative effect an egotistic celebrity coroner who jeopardizes an investigation because she lets a TV camera crew from Court TV follow her around, or an overage female rookie cop so in love with danger that she commits an unthinkable act? When the bones of an abused 12-year-old boy who disappeared in 1980 turn up in the woods above Hollywood (near a street named Wonderland, where former governor Jerry Brown used to live), the case stirs up Bosch's memories of his own troubled childhood. Also, as his captain so aptly points out, Harry is the LAPD's prime "shit magnet," an investigator who attracts muck and trouble wherever he goes. So it's no great surprise when the investigation takes a couple of nasty turns, right up through the last chapter. Connelly is such a careful, quiet writer that he can slow down the story to sketch in some relatively minor characters a retired doctor, a couple who lived through their foster children without missing a beat. (One-day laydown Apr. 16) Forecast: Connelly doesn't need much help in hitting the charts, but Little, Brown is going all out anyway, with a massive television, radio and print ad campaign, transit ads in New York and a 10-city author tour. Expect blockbuster sales and blockbuster satisfaction. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Detective Harry Bosch is back on the homicide scene in Hollywood when the body of a 12-year-old boy, who was the victim of repeated physical abuse, is discovered. To make the case more difficult, the murder trail is cold, being more than 20 years old. Harry's investigations uncover secrets-some better left undisturbed: family violence, desertion, past sins, the seamy side of a seemingly normal neighborhood. Harry, unable to leave the case unsolved, worries about the problem until he identifies a suspect. When his partner "clears" the case, with fatal consequences, Harry decides to hang up his gun. Well read by Peter Jay Fernandez, Connelly's latest thriller provides plenty of red herrings, plot twists, and romantic interest that will keep listeners guessing for a long time.-Joanna M. Burkhardt, Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Univ. of Rhode Island, Providence (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
Connelly takes his customary edge off Harry Bosch's latest case: the murder of a 12-year-old runaway that had never even been suspected until a playful dog turned up his bones in a shallow grave. Most of the people who lived in Laurel Canyon around 1980-the approximate date the forensics indicate the sorely beaten boy's life was abruptly ended with a final blow to the head-have long since moved on. So one of Harry's first jobs is figuring out who was even in the neighborhood when the boy was buried. Even after a distinctive skateboard allows Harry to identify the victim as Arthur Delacroix, lots of problems remain for Harry and Julia Brasher, the LAPD rookie who's soon sharing his confidences and his bed. A conversation with a known pedophile who lived a few doors away from Arthur's grave plunges Harry into official hot water. Arthur's abusive father is suspiciously eager to confess to the murder. And a routine chat with Johnny Stokes, a childhood friend of Arthur's who's grown up to be the complete loser, explodes in violence. Connelly handles all these episodes with his accustomed skill, but he can't hide the fact that they're episodes designed to make a 20-year-old homicide seem more urgent and dangerous to the present-day cast than it actually is. Harry still shines as a detective, and the sorry souls the evidence flushes out into the open go far to explain his conviction that "in every murder is the tale of a city." But the case itself is marked by coincidences and shifting suspicions that suggest untidiness rather than virtuosity, and there's precious little of the unremitting tension that's won Connelly such a following over the past ten years. A bone to throw to loyalists while they wait for another case to rival A Darkness More Than Night (2001). Author tour
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
