Review by Booklist Review
When we last saw Harry Bosch--City of Bones [BKL Mr 1 02]--he had resigned from the LAPD after a particularly frustrating case involving the murder of an abused child. Harry's back, but he's still not wearing a badge. This time, prompted by a former colleague, Harry is trying to resurrect a cold case, the murder of a film company employee and the subsequent robbery of $1 million being used as a prop on a film location. Working as a private investigator without a client, Harry immediately falls into harm's way: the FBI wants him off the case, claiming ties to terrorism, and is willing to get rough if he doesn't comply. But Harry plays hardball, too, and he soon has enough leverage on the feds to keep digging. In crime fiction, cold cases never fail to hide multifaceted layers of wrongdoing. This one's no different, and Harry slogs his way through every new revelation, each more shocking than the one before. What Connelly does so well in this series is to contrast Harry's desperate need to play the role of the avenger with his growing realization that what he must do to play that role has alienated him from the human intimacy he craves. It isn't an uncommon theme in hard-boiled novels, but Connelly manages to rub it raw in a way that others can't quite equal. It's never pretty watching Harry edge toward connection with those he loves and then back away, drawn by the pain of others, but it just may be the most compelling train wreck in crime fiction. BillOtt.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Award-winning former crime reporter Connelly (The Black Echo; City of Bones) hits all the right notes with this latest in his Edgar-winning mystery series featuring sax-playing L.A. detective Harry Bosch. Even though this marks the ninth outing for Harry, the principled, incorruptible investigator shows little sign of slowing in his unrelenting pursuit of justice for all. Disillusioned by his constant battle with police hypocrisy and bureaucracy, Harry quits the department after 28 years on the job. Like so many ex-cops before him, he finds retirement boring: "I was staying up late, staring at the walls and drinking too much red wine." He decides to take advantage of his newly minted private-eye license and get back to work. The case he chooses-one that he had been briefly involved in four years before-is the puzzling unsolved murder of 24-year-old Angella Benton. Angella's death is linked to the theft of $2 million from a film company foolishly employing real cash as a prop on an action-movie set. Harry patiently follows the bloody trail from Angella's violated body through the Hollywood heist to the disappearance of an FBI computer expert and the shooting of two LAPD cops. His investigation eventually leads him to the elite terrorist hunters of the new Department of Homeland Security. Few will follow every twist and turn of the labyrinthine plot, but no matter. The fun comes in watching Harry slowly and brilliantly separate the seemingly impossibly knotted strands and then knit them back into whole cloth. This exciting procedural is as good as any in the series, and Connelly's concluding coda has a kicker about Harry's private life that will draw gasps of astonishment from longtime readers. (One-day laydown Apr. 1) Forecast: All the usual marketing and promotion jams have been kicked out on this one-television, radio and print advertising; transit ads; multicity author tour; postcards; etc.-which should push it to the top of the lists. Special bonus: fans at Connelly's readings will receive a compilation CD featuring Bosch's favorite jazz tunes. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Set a year after the events in City of Bones, Connelly's latest Harry Bosch novel finds Harry resigned from the Los Angeles police force but discovering that retirement is not his cup of tea. When an ex-cop confined to a wheelchair asks for Harry's help in solving an almost five-year-old crime, Bosch jumps at the opportunity. As he starts asking questions, his friends from the force tell him to back off. Then when the FBI threatens imprisonment, Harry realizes he is in over his head. To bring the perpetrators to justice, Bosch realizes that he is going to have to call in some favors. For the first time, Connelly has written a Bosch novel in the first person, adding extra insight and depth into an already well-established character. It's guaranteed that this novel won't get "lost" on the shelves; Connelly's Blood Work was recently made into a Clint Eastwood flick. Highly recommended for most popular fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/02.]-Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. (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 School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-After more than 25 years with the L.A. Police Department, recently retired Harry Bosch decides to finish the murder investigation of Angella Benton, a case he had been quickly pulled off more than four years earlier. Gaining additional background information from a former colleague, now a quadriplegic as a result of having been shot during the investigation, Harry begins contacting any and all of the people who could have facts pertaining to the crime. He believes that the murder is tied to a film scene and $2 million in cash, and that the entire caper was ingeniously set up well in advance. With dogged determination, he risks his life more than once to prove his theory correct. Connelly expertly weaves the many complex story parts together, resulting in an action-packed ending. As in real life, all aspects of the case must be researched thoroughly, and the bulk of the novel involves the time-consuming, labor-intensive effort that goes into finding answers. Several subplots-including ones involving jazz, Harry's ex-wife, and another murder-help to round out characters, inject other interests, and relieve the intensity of solving the murder. Young adults who read true crime and forensics, or who are interested in police procedures, will surely pick this one up.-Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA (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
Retired from the LAPD's Hollywood Division, Harry Bosch (City of Bones, 2002, etc.) has taken out a p.i.'s license--a lucky thing, because a hailstorm of backlogged felonies is about to come his way. The edge of the wedge is the unsolved strangling of Angella Benton, an underling at Eidolon Productions. Harry had worked the case for only a few days before it was snatched away from him by Robbery-Homicide, whose investigators linked the killing to a more high-profile crime only a few days later--the theft of $2 million on a one-day loan to an Eidolon-produced movie and the shooting of the security chief responsible for minding it--before running out of leads. Now Lawton Cross, one of the two Robbery-Homicide dicks, paralyzed in still another shootout that left his partner dead, has dredged up an intriguing fact that's never been made public: An FBI agent tracking marked currency had called Cross's partner to tell him that one of the bills reported stolen in the Eidolon heist had already been seized by police in an unrelated case. What makes this lead especially hot is that the agent in question vanished only a few days after making the call, and that a second allegedly stolen bill has been traced to Mousouwa Aziz, a suspected money courier for international terrorists. It all adds up to a fine mess: an endless chain of felonies, turf battles between the LAPD and the FBI, and real trouble for Harry when the Feebs decide that he's taken too close an interest in Aziz and come after him with all the new legal powers they've been granted since 9/11, and then some. Amazingly, Connelly manages to keep every new curve not only clear but breathlessly exciting. Mystery fans will cherish echoes of The Doorbell Rang and The Long Goodbye, but the best news is that prodigious Connelly hasn't been content simply to echo his own earlier successes. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
