The Closers - Michael Connelly

   2005; 447 pages.  Book 11 (out of 20) in the “Harry Bosch Novel” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Police Procedural; Hard-boiled Crime Fiction; Murder Thriller.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    After three years of retirement, Harry Bosch is back in the Los Angeles Police Department! The chief of police has personally extended the offer to join up again.

 

    Most of the LAPD that were there when Harry retired now welcome him back, but a couple are a bit frosty to him.  One in particular is downright hostile about it.

 

    He’s not getting his old job back.  Instead, he’s been assigned to the Open-Unsolved Unit.  You and I would call it the “Cold Case Department”.  He and his partner, Detective Kizmin “Kiz” Rider, have already been given a case to reopen: an unsolved murder of a high school girl way back in 1988.  And, as one of LAPD's upper brass quips, “New hope for the dead.  Harry Bosch is on the case again.”

 

    The trouble is, Harry’s not sure whether that Captain was being sarcastic or not.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Closers combines two of my favorite crime genres: Police Procedurals and Cold Cases, and is the eleventh book in Michael Connelly’s 20-volume “Harry Bosch” series.  I’ve read a bunch of these books, starting way back before this blog existed.  I do recall the first one, The Concrete Blonde, and being blown away by it.  I’m not reading the series in order, and I don’t think I missing out on much.

 

    Harry’s “unretirement” is further complicated by him having to learn to work with a younger, female detective as an equal partner instead of an underling.  He also has to get caught up on the latest technological advances in things like DNA profiling, wiretaps (via something called ListenTech), and phone call tracing (via something called AutoTrack).  Harry grudgingly acquiesces to all that, but draws the line at using computers to write up reports.  He’ll stick with a good old typewriter, thank you.

 

    Harry, known in the past for his uncompromising brusqueness when dealing with authority figures, now also has to learn to be tactful.  Because this is a cold case, it means two other detectives originally worked the case and failed to come up with anything.  Harry now has to interview them and critique their performances, and hope he finds something they missed.  Good luck with trying to be diplomatic, Harry.

 

    I love this series because Michael Connelly is a master at crafting a complex, captivating mystery, filled with subtle clues, human drama, red herrings, plot twists, and well-developed characters.  There’s just enough thrills and spills to keep the pacing brisk, without the action becoming “over the top”.

 

    The ending is suitably exciting, and is keyed by Harry discovering a subtle clue in a photograph.  It’s a crucial bit of evidence, so tag along with Harry and Kiz as they methodically discover and apprehend the killer(s).  Trying to solve the case before they do will probably be a fruitless venture.  The final chapter gives one last surprising plot twist that will leave Harry and the reader with a heavy heart.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Jonesing (v.): having a fixation on (something).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 22,565 ratings and 1,694 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.19/5 based on 60,485 ratings and 2,470 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “You know who we have to thank for this, don’t you?” Bosch asked.

    She looked at him quizzically.

    “I give up.”

    “Mel Gibson.”

    “What are you talking about?”

    “When did Lethal Weapon come out?  Right around this time, right?”

    “I guess.  But what are you talking about?  Those movies are so far-fetched.”

    “That’s my point.  That’s the movie that started all of this holding the gun sideways and with two hands, one over the other.  We got blood on this gun because the shooter was a Lethal Weapon fan.”  (pg. 35)

 

    “So if I was a defense lawyer,” Pratt continued, “I would have Mackey cop to the burglary because the statute of limitations has long expired.  He would say the gun bit him when he tried it out so he got rid of the damn thing — long before any murder.  He’d say, “No sir I didn’t kill that little girl with it and you can’t prove I did.  You can’t prove I ever laid eyes on her.”

    Rider and Bosch nodded.

    “So you got nothing.”

    They nodded again.

    “Not bad for a day’s work.   What do you want to do about it?”  (pg. 141)

 

“I think you could probably talk a zebra out of his white stripes if you had to.”  (pg. 272)

    There was a lot less profanity in The Closers than I expected: just 7 instances in the first 10% of the book, although five of those were f-bombs.

 

    As is the norm, the author uses lots of acronyms that us civilian readers need to remember.  Among them here are ESB (Evidence Storage Building), PDU (Public Disorder Unit), RHD (Robbery & Homicide Division), and IAD (Internal Affairs Department).  I remembered most of them, but kept forgetting what SID stood for.

 

    I can’t think of anything else to quibble about.  The Closers was a great read for me, with an awesome glimpse into what it’s like to be a big city detective.  I count Michael Connelly as one of my favorite Police Procedural authors; his books never disappoint me.

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  The Closers is set in the present, which means 2005, the year it was published.  It was fun to see some long-departed entities in the text, most notably the Yellow Pages and Borders Bookstore.  Those were the days!

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.

Trunk Music - Michael Connelly

   1997; 438 pages.  New Author? : No, but it's been a while.  Book 5 (out of 19) of the “Harry Bosch” series.  Genre : Murder-Mystery; Police Procedural.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    It seems pretty obvious.  The victim was killed by two shots to the back of the head.  His hands had been bound behind his back, and he’d been stuffed into the trunk of his Rolls Royce prior to being executed.  This was clearly a case of trunk music (see excerpt, below, for what that is), a telltale sign that it was a Mafia hit.  It’s just a matter of figuring out which city’s mob did the dirty deed, and who exactly pulled the trigger.

    And yet a couple of the minor details don’t quite make sense.  For instance, whatever had been used to bind or cuff the victim’s hands was removed after the slaying.  So were his shoes.  Why would a hitman do that?

    Oh well, whatever the reason, Detective Harry Bosch will figure it out in his investigation.  But tread carefully, Harry.  Sometimes the biggest obstacles to solving a case aren’t the bad guys.

    It’s your fellow law enforcement agents.

What’s To Like...

    The action in Trunk Music starts immediately.  The book opens with Harry Bosch arriving at the scene of the crime, and things don’t slow down at all through the final page.  Harry divides his time between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and Michael Connelly is obviously well-acquainted with these cities, as he gives detailed descriptions of Harry’s wanderings through both.

    The book was written in the 90’s, and it was neat to see some of the nostalgia from that decade.  American West Airlines is still in business, although Harry prefers to fly Southwest.  You use a VCR to watch videos, a teletype machine to send documents, and a “cellular phone” to call people.  I also liked Connelly’s tip-of-the-hat to the book “Stranger in a Strange Land”.

    This is both a police procedural and a crime-thriller.  The “whodunit” portion gets resolved at around 70%, and then the book kicks into Action-Intrigue for the rest of the way.  Plot twists abound; so do red herrings; and I liked it that Harry could reach wrong conclusions at times.  He can also be a bit of an a**hole, which is kinda neat.

    There’s a goodly amount of cussing, which would be expected in this type of story; and some sex.  The chapters are long, and of uneven length.  This is a standalone story, although a couple characters, Eleanor Wish and Roy Lindell, who appear in other books in the series, show up here.  The Kindle version ends at 88%, with the rest of the e-book devoted to a preview of the next book in the series.

Excerpts...

    “You said he was put in his trunk and capped twice, huh? . . . Bosch, you there?”

    “Yeah, I’m here.  Yeah, capped twice in the trunk.”

    “Trunk music.”

    “What?”

    “It’s a wise guy saying outta Chicago.  You know, when they whack some poor slob they say, ‘Oh, Tony?  Don’t worry about Tony.  He’s trunk music now.  You won’t see him no more’”  (loc. 394)

    “Harry, you want the swag on this?”

    “Swag?”

    “Scientific wild ass guess.”  (loc. 468)

Kindle Details...

    Trunk Music presently sells for $6.99 at Amazon right now.  The other books in the series are all in the price range of $4.99 to $9.99.  

 “Kenahepyou?”  (loc. 588)

    The quibbles are few.  At one point, while searching a suspect’s home, Harry discovers a potential murder weapon, sealed in a plastic bag, hidden behind the toilet.  He’s excited because it’s another piece of evidence to tie the suspect to the crime.  But I was thinking, “Harry!  For cripes sake, the perp would never keep something like that around.  Someone planted it there!  Don’t even touch it!”

    Also, the ending, although suitably replete with excitement, felt a bit contrived.  There’s a lot riding on one of Harry’s hunches, including a whole slew of cops.  If Harry’s wrong, they’re gonna kick themselves for not staking out other possible sites.  Things work out of course, and Harry’s proven right.  But all the baddies get taken care of in a manner that felt just a tad too convenient.

    But hey, by then the plotline was Action-Intrigue, not Police Procedural, and it made for a thrilling climax.  So I’m not complaining.

    9 Stars.  For me, Trunk Music was a great page-turner.   My only question after finishing it was whether or not all the “bending of the rules” that Harry (and some of his colleagues) get away with really do occur in the real world.  If so, it makes me wonder if we’re closer to living in a police state than we realize.

Nine Dragons - Michael Connelly

2009; 374 pages. A NY Times Bestseller (but what isn't?). Genre : Crime Fiction. Overall Rating : 7*/10.

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In a tough L.A. neighborhood, an elderly Chinese shop owner is brutally gunned down. Detective Harry Bosch investigates, and as he pieces the case together, he's introduced to Chinese gangs known as The Triads. Alas, someone is leaking information to the baddies and he gets a phone call telling him to back off. Then his daughter is kidnapped in Hong Kong, and a video of her, bound and gagged, is sent to Harry as a message.

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Now Harry has a very limited amount of time to rescue his daughter half a world away, then get back before his suspect flees L.A. to the safety of mainland China.

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What's To Like...

It's an action-packed story with no slow spots. Besides working on the double-pronged case, Harry has to deal with a partner that no longer has any taste for the job and a colleague from the Asian Gang Unit who can't be trusted. Harry repeatedly has bouts of foot-in-mouth disease, and some of his theories turn out to be logical, sensible, and wrong.

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There are enough plot twists to keep you on your toes, and the ending wraps up nicely, without any loose ends. There are Chinese characters in the story (always a plus for me), and a lawyer who isn't your stereotypical scumbag.

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OCONS? I got your Ocons right here...

The main problem with Nine Dragons is that there are too many OCONs, which I just made up, and which stands for "Oh, come on now!". Here are three of them.

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a.) The shopkeeper takes three bullets at close range in the chest. He's bleeding out and has 30 seconds to live. Yet he has the presence of mind to grab a key piece of evidence and swallow it. Wow. That's not how I'd be using the last half-minute of my life. b.) In the kidnap video of Harry's daughter, she tries to kick the cameraman. She misses, but the camera jerks away for a second. And just happens to briefly record the view outside the hotel window. Which has not one, not two, but three identifying objects to help in locating the hotel. Talk about a lucky break. c.) Then there's the timing of the Hong Kong rescue mission. Harry has 24 hours after he lands there to locate his daughter, kill the baddies, rescue her, and get back on a plane to L.A. to stop the suspect from fleeing. And he succeeds. Sheesh. If only the perpetrator had been bin Laden.

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There are several other Ocons, which we'll skip so as to not give any spoilers. Suffice it to say, this is not a Police Procedural tale. Harry waltzes into Hong Kong, refuses to even contact the local police, sashays out with his daughter in tow while leaving nine corpses in his wake, and Hong Kong law enforcement is clueless the whole time. Yeah, like that would happen.

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Kewl New Words...

Funicular : describing a tram (or other conveyance) that goes up the side of a mountain, pulled by a cable. Gimballed : describing how a ship's compass is suspended so that it's unaffected by the movement of the boat. The technical aspect of a gimbal is interesting, but not worth detailing here.

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Excerpt...

"Kowloon," Starkey said. "Sounds sort of ominous."

"My daughter told me it means 'Nine Dragons.'"

"See, I told you. Who would name their neighborhood Nine Dragons unless they wanted to scare people away?"

"It comes from a legend. During one of the old dynasties the emperor was supposedly just a boy who got chased by the Mongols into the area that is now Hong kong. He saw the eight mountain peaks that surrounded it and wanted to call the place Eight Dragons. But one of the men who guarded him reminded him that the emperor was a dragon too. So they called it Nine Dragons. Kowloon." (pg. 143)

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Fu, Cai. Ai, Xi.

("Luck, Money, Love, Family", and tattooed on the shopkeeper's ankles)...

There's no denying that the Ocons present some believability issues. I don't think this will go down as one of the better Harry Bosch books. But Connelly has always been a master storyteller, and that's still true here. Nine Dragons is fiction, not literature; and works just fine as long as you don't stop to analyze the details. We'll give it 7 stars, recommending that you turn the right-hand half of your brain off and just enjoy the ride.

Echo Park - Michael Connelly

2006; 427 pages. Genre : Murder-Mystery. Overall Rating : B+.

   .In 1993, Marie Gesto disappeared. Her car was found in an abandoned garage, her clothing on the front seat, neatly folded. For thirteen years, it has been Detective Harry Bosch's cold case. Now a psycho killer has come forward and confessed to the abduction and murder, even offering to lead the police to the body, in exchange for escaping the death penalty. So why does Harry feel like someone's blowing smoke across his eyes?
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What's To Like...
    In some mysteries, the perp is obvious after 20 pages. In others, it's as if the author just picks the bad guy at random at the end of the book. Echo Park finds the perfect balance. There are plenty of twists to keep you guessing, and Connelly goes easy with the lurid gore.

   .Echo Park is set in the greater Los Angeles area, where I lived for three summers, so it was neat to read about familiar environs. Finally, anyone who names his protagonist Hieronymus Bosch is kewl in my book.

   .There are some weaknesses. While Harry and the baddies are well-done, most of the rest of the good guys are a bit 2-D. Harry's partner is little more than the token gay girl, whose main role apparently is to take a couple bullets so Harry can stress out over catching her assailant.

   .This is my first Harry Bosch book. It started off great and quickly pulled me in. There are those who say it isn't the best in the series. If so, I may have to read a couple more of these.