City of Bones, by Michael Connelly

One of Connelly's best.

Harry Bosch is sent out to see a bone unearthed by a citizen's dog. The discovery leads to the remains of a twelve-year-old boy, at least 20 years old, in the hillsides of the Santa Monica mountains.

As with all cases, Harry is impatient and wants to find the apparent killer immediately. He works night and day to identify the body,then track down possible suspects. In the course of the investigation he meets Julia Brasher, rookie cop, and finds a soulmate in her.

The investigation leads down one alley and then the other, at each turn encountering snags big and small. As usual, he is dogged by upper levels of police management wanting quick solves and willing to bend the truth to get there. The pursuit of image never interests Bosch and he insists on telling the truth every time.

More than once in the course of the story Bosch asks himself or is asked by others - what does he believe in? He says he believes in the "blue religion". The pursuit of the killers, the pursuit of justice, the truth. He is, however, as Deputy Chief Irvin Irving says, a "shit magnet". Bad things happen to Harry. Perhaps more so in this novel than in others.

IN the end the case is solved. But not particularly satisfactorily. We never really find out what happened, exactly, and the ending is ugly.

I have lived in Harry's body, in a way, for many months, as I read through this series. He would probably not find me interesting but I find him fascinating and very real. That reality comes from Connelly's attention to details. He doesn't have to trot out every injury in a homicide. Describe it fully. He doesn't have to tell us what a rich woman's house appears like to Bosch. He doesn't have to take us into the paperwork. But he does. And that's why I buy it all.

Note: I wrote this in 2009. I don't usually post reviews of mysteries here but I make exceptions.

9 Dragons, by Michael Connelly

The latest in the Harry Bosch series, this one goes into territory rarely experienced by Bosch.

Bosch and his partner Ferras are assigned what appears to be a routine liquor store robbery. The owner, John Li, was killed before he could reach his gun. The killer took the disk from the digital camera for that day, but left two other disks that Li had saved. Bosch looks through the two carefully and discovers a possible motive for the killing. Along with a representative from the Asian Crimes Unit Bosch postulates a connection to an Asian triad based in Hong Kong.

A possible suspect is brought in for questioning and is arrested for extortion. Harry then receives a threatening phone call that he suspects came from a Triad member. And then a video of Harry's thirteen-year-old daughter showing her tied up and held in some unknown place.

Harry only met his daughter when she was four, and had no idea she existed before that. He managed to find a way into her life and an uneasy alliance with her mother, Eleanor Wish, to whom he was once married. Mother and daughter now live in Hong Kong, where Madeline has been learning Chinese and Eleanor works for a casino. So when Harry gets the video he heads for Hong Kong.

What follows is a breathless chase to find his daughter, perhaps more hectic than anything Bosch has experienced before. He leaves devastation in his wake and reason to pile on yet another load of regret. And as we have come to see in other Connelly books, there are twists at the end.

Harry has mellowed over the years but still has "the mission" to get a case solved as quickly as possible. This impatience often costs him dearly but also often means success in his solve rate. He still makes rash decisions and is impatient with those who do not see the job as he does, but he's more cautious, has learned from the past. He is not spending as much time castigating himself and has moved more into his role as father. It's a role that will be interesting to watch him fill.

Note: not the type book I usually write about here because I usually just write my reviews of mysteries on bookcrossing.com and nowhere else. This book is a loaner, however, not registered with bookcrossing, and I wanted to be sure I got some of my thoughts down somewhere.

The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly

The "Lincoln Lawyer" returns. After a year's hiatus, during which time defense attorney Mickey Haller goes through rehab and stays straight, Haller is abruptly thrown back into the world of law when a fellow attorney is murdered. Haller takes over most of the cases, including the "franchise": a prominent film producer accused of murdering his wife and her lover.

In addition to having to get up to speed quickly, to sort out what is going on in each of the cases, Haller is concerned that his own life may be threatened. In part for this reason and in part because the murdered attorney had been his friend, Haller begrudgingly lets LAPD detective Harry Bosch in. Haller wants the murderer caught as much as Bosch does, but is limited by law in what he can do to help Bosch. Their alliance is an uneasy one but one that seems to develop into almost a mutual respect.

As is the case with other Connelly novels, this one is replete with the details, is exacting in getting them right. Thus we can step right into Haller's shoes and feel the pressure as he takes steps to reconstruct a calendar, to track down clients. We also can breathe with him as he resumes his habit of working out of his Lincoln Town cars (three of them, rotated), watching the Suitcase City pass by as he is driven from one appointment to another.

It was a pleasure to read a Mickey Haller novel in which Bosch figures so prominently. It gives us a different perspective on the sometimes-explosive man-on-a-mission. It was also a pleasure to get to know Haller better, to follow his efforts to get back into the real world and perhaps to take steps to win his ex-wife back.