This is another excellent entry in the Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch detective series. Connelly’s books are consistently excellent. Bosch is a return — resurrection might be a better word — to the anti-authority, hard-boiled, chain-smoking (although he has quit in the most recent novels)cop who sets his own standards of excellence and tries to live up to them, often crossing swords with his superiors in the process. Unlike many modern “heroes,” he doesn't suffer from constant angst. He does take crime as a personal
affront and seeks the truth no matter where it might lead.
Harry and his partner, Jerry Edgar, are trying to find an identity to match with a child’s skeleton that had been dug up in the Hollywood hills. The child has apparently been beaten and abandoned, symbolic of what has happened to
Harry’s city. Bosch feels alone in his battle to
find the killer, hindered by an overzealous media,
and a department that doesn’t have the same zeal for the case that Harry does. Longhidden secrets emerge in numerous subplots as Bosch begins to unearth the truth. As in many
of the other novels, the perpetrator and motive for the crime emerge slowly and often surprisingly. As Harry’s captain remarks, Harry seems to be the department's “shit magnet,” with all the difficult and dirty cases falling his way.Connelly skillfully sketches in minor characters
as he takes the reader to the book’s inexorable
conclusion. Long live Harry Bosch!
