The Drop - Michael Connelly

   2011; 481 pages.  Book 15 (out of 20) in the “Harry Bosch Novel” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Police Procedural; Hard-boiled Crime Fiction; Serial Killer Thriller.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    It's a good day for Detective Harry Bosch and his partner David Chu: they've just been assigned a cold case from the LAPD archives and they're always happy when that happens.  After all, that’s what their department, the  "Open-Unsolved Unit" of the Los Angeles Police Department ("OU" for short) exists for.

 

    Lieutenant Duvall has asked them to reexamine the files of an old murder/sexual assault case because recent (and improved) DNA testing on a blood sample found at the scene of the crime has come up with a match.  That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve found the killer; it could be a “false positive” by the crime lab due to accidental contamination of the retested sample.  But the DNA match is of a guy who’s a registered sex offender, so that makes it a promising lead.

 

    But there are a couple of problems.  First of all, it turns out the sex offender was only eight years old when the crime was committed.  It’s hard to imagine him raping and killing at that age.

 

    Secondly, the Lieutenant has just assigned an additional case to Harry and David.  That means they'll have to split their time between two separate investigations.  And this new one is a doozy: George Irving, the son of a prominent city councilman, has fallen to his death from a seventh-floor hotel balcony.  Was it suicide, murder, or an accident?  The councilman has specifically requested that Harry be put in charge of finding out.

 

    That's rather surprising, because Councilman Irving is an ex-cop who feels the LAPD unfairly set him up as a scapegoat years ago, and he's been making their lives miserable ever since.

 

    And he blames Harry Bosch in particular for his dismissal from their ranks.

 

What’s To Like...

    Talk about a bargain: the reader gets two Harry Bosch stories for the price of one in The Drop.  You might expect the author to somehow contrive to merge the two plotlines at some point in the book, but that doesn’t happen here.  Harry has to find time to investigate and solve them both, while meanwhile raising a teenage daughter, trying his best not to botch a potential romantic interest, and squabbling with most of his LAPD coworkers, including his partner.

 

    This is a typical Harry Bosch novel.  It is set entirely in the greater Los Angeles area, and even one of my old stomping grounds, Newhall, gets a brief mention.  This is a “police procedural”, meaning the emphasis is on savvy police sleuthing, not on over-the-top thrills, chases, and spills.  The pressure is on the author to keep things interesting and Michael Connelly, as always, is up to the task.

 

    There are 42 chapters covering 481 pages, so there's always have a convenient place to stop for the night.  I learned a new Spanish phrase, “muy sabroso”, which I had to google, and had to wiki the music reference to Frank Morgan as well.

 

    Both investigations have lots of plot twists along the way to trip up Harry and the reader.  Harry counters by not always doing things “by the book”, which is also usual for him, and I was left wondering just how often things such as “jumping the warrant” and the “LAPD choke hold”, both of which occur here, happen in the real world.

 

    The ending is what you’d expect from a police procedural.  One investigation gets wrapped up around 70%-Kindle, the other about 10%, later, the the book closes poignantly with Harry doing some much needed soul-searching.  I suspect real-life cops go through the same sort of thing from time to time.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

High Jingo (n., phrase): a situation that is highly politicized or fraught with danger

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 4,262 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.17/5 based on 56,268 ratings and 3,083 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “You said he has a job.  Doing what?”

    “He works for the Grande Mercado up near Roscoe. He works in the parking lot, collecting the shopping carts and emptying trash cans, that sort of thing.  They pay him twenty-five dollars a day.  It keeps him in cigarettes and potato chips.  He’s addicted to both.”  (loc. 779)

 

    On his way back he saw Lieutenant Duvall standing outside his cubicle.  Chu was nowhere in sight.  Bosch knew that Duvall wanted an update on the Irving case.  In the past twenty-four hours she had left him two messages and an e-mail, all of which he had failed to return.

    “Harry, have you gotten my messages?” she asked as he approached.

    “I got them, but every time I was going to call, somebody called me first and I got distracted.  Sorry, Lieutenant.”

    “Why don’t we go into my office so you won’t get any more of these distractions.”

    It wasn’t spoken as a question.  (loc. 1540)

 

Kindle Details…

    You can pick up the The Drop for $11.99 at Amazon.  The rest of the books in the series are all in the $9.99-$11.99 range, with the older ones generally having the slightly lower prices.  Michael Connelly has several other series, plus some standalone novels; those range in price from $8.99 to $14.99.  Finally, he has a few short stories that tie in to his various series; which are usually priced at $1.99.

 

“How old is your daughter?”  “Fifteen going on thirty.”  (loc. 920 )

    The quibbles about The Drop are minor.  Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books always have a gritty tone, so you have to expect a fair amount of cussing, violence, and references to things such as torture, sex, rape, and child molestation.

 

    Also, police departments apparently go crazy when it comes to using acronyms.  In addition to the few that I knew and/or could figure out, there were the following: OCP, PAB, DROP, “code three”, RHD, TOD, MPR, SID, JD, PSI’s, OPG, NBH, DSAT, BOR, EOW, RFC, and AGU.  Sometimes Michael Connelly tells you their meaning; sometimes you’re expected to suss it out for yourself.

 

    The book’s title refers to one of those acronyms listed.  “DROP” stands for “Deferred Retirement Option Plan”.  Harry is getting old, and DROP is one more thing for him to stress out about, but it has only tangential impact to the storyline.

 

    That’s about it for the quibbles, and they’re all pretty ticky-tacky.

 

    8½ Stars.  Subtract ½ Star if you like you like your cop stories to be heavy on the gunfire-&-chase scenes and light on the sleuthing.  Personally, police procedurals are favorite kind of crime novel, and The Drop was another fine effort by Michael Connelly in that genre.