Our good friend, Adam Shreve, swears by Connelly. While he's read many, he also listens to the audiobooks while driving, puttering, pretending to work. There's something to say about an author who reads as well as he is heard. Connelly is harder-boiled than a lot of his police procedural/bestselling crime fiction peers, but his prose is still clear.
The Concrete Blonde is the third in the "Harry Bosch" detective series, and at the time I read it I considered it the best. The story was well-paced and -drawn, mixing the normal detective work established in the two "Black" books with some courtroom drama. It was a welcome change of pace. In short, we Harry gets a tip on a serial killer, "The Dollmaker," confronts the man and shoots him dead when it looks like he's pulling a gun. Forensics match some of the victims, not all, and his widow sues for the unjustified, "cowboy" shooting. During the trial, another victim surfaces (a blond buried in concrete). Detecting and drama ensue. A new longer term antagonist is introduced (I think; haven't read that book). There are some great action scenes, a nice blind alley in the investigation and solid development of the supporting cast.
Behind all of this, we're getting a better sense of "Harry Bosch" at the same time Connelly is. The Dollmaker case was mentioned back at the series' beginning, and I remember looking forward to finding out the whole story before I'd even finished
The Black Echo. I'm happy to report I wasn't disappointed. In fact, I liked this book so much, I went right back to my shelf and pulled out the next installment (this is the benefit of buying authors in bulk, once you know you like them).
Regretfully, I was not as caught up in the search for Bosch's mother's killer.
The Last Coyote, a reference to Bosch as part of a fading breed of cop, finds the detective on administrative leave, undergoing psych evaluation. In his off time, he decides to really throw himself into finding out more about his mother's killer. She was a prostitute, and the case was left unsolved, but why would that stop Harry Bosch?
Technically, this is a fine novel. The story is labyrinthine, as befitting a pulp detective novel, but I just didn't connect with it. His construction, as with before, is still strong; no one can argue - at this stage of his career - that he isn't a gifted wordsmith. And yet...I thought he twisted a few too many times
just for the sake of a twist. And that could be because I came off a really good, LA-centric cop book. The two, read back-to-back, don't gel quite how I wanted them to. Could that be my fault? Eh.
The book winds through the old case, an old gangster, politicians and tycoons in a way that seems - from this point in time - a little rehashed. The cops are corrupt, the prostitutes have hearts of gold and a little boy (young Bosch) is made to suffer in the dark for decades. Okay, but I just wasn't a fan of the road the story took or the turn-offs it took. It's not
bad, per se, but just wasn't the resolution to the "mother's murder" backstory I thought would make dramatic sense. Compared to other writers' comparable works, it's good, but Connelly set his own bar high and this came up lacking.
The Concrete Blonde - third in the Bosch series, and the strongest to that point. 4.5/5
The Last Coyote - fourth, and a bit of a misstep. 2.5/5
-EMH
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