4 ½ stars. Wow. This was good. A lot of things I didn’t expect. I didn’t want to stop reading.STORY BRIEF:McCaleb is 46 years old, retired from the FBI, and lives on a fishing boat in a Los Angeles Harbor. Two months earlier Gloria was killed in a convenience store hold up. Her organs went to several people. McCaleb got her heart. Gloria’s sister Graciela, a nurse, figures this out and asks McCaleb to help find the shooter. The police have stopped working on the case and are either incompetent or don’t care. Partly out of guilt, McCaleb begins investigating. Since he no longer has a badge it’s difficult for him to get information, but he’s resourceful and effective.REVIEWER’S OPINION:This definitely is not a formulaic slowly uncovering the clues kind of story. Yes it is a police procedural and we do slowly uncover clues, but it is fascinating and entertaining during the process. The only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars was because it was almost too good in the following ways. (1) Toward the end, it kept me awake one night. I couldn’t stop thinking about it – too much anxiety and fear. (2) For a while, Terry is being framed. That plot device is not a favorite of mine. It’s such a helpless victim feel when a killer plants evidence and then calls the police. I’m fine with good guys being in danger, but doing it that way is more frustrating than entertaining.It’s interesting to think about how times have changed. The characters didn’t use cell phones in this story - the way we do today. The cops used pagers. McCaleb used pay phones a lot. This is not a complaint, just something I noticed.THE MOVIE:Clint Eastwood played McCaleb in the 2002 movie of this book.NARRATOR:Dick Hill was very good.SERIES:The author has four series. The characters sometimes overlap and refer to each other. So far each book I’ve read could be read as a stand-alone, but I like doing them in chronological order. The chronological order is as follows.Harry Bosch books 1 through 5 (Harry is LA homicide detective)McCaleb book 1 (this book – he is former FBI)Bosch book 6 – Angels FlightBosch book 7 and McCaleb book 2 – A Darkness More Than Night (They’re working on the same killer.)DATA:tUnabridged audiobook length: 12 hrs and 41 mins. Narrator: Dick Hill. Swearing language: strong but not frequently used. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: two, told not shown. Setting: 1995 or earlier mostly Los Angeles, California, plus Mexico. Book Copyright: 1998. Genre: crime mystery thriller. Ending: Satisfying. The good guys win.
I'm reading mysteries because I'm writing one. So I've read all of Raymond Chandler, and now I've read "Blood Work," by contemporary author Michael Connelly, who has cited Chandler as his primary inspiration.There are worlds of difference between the two authors. To begin with, Connelly's detective, Terry McCaleb, is dry as dust compared with the observant, cynical, never less than poetic Philip Marlowe; and where Chandler's novels evolve like nightmares in which the author finds himself lost, Connelly's plot is all procedural, unfolding as if following a meticulously researched outline. Long before reading the afterword, in which Connelly credits the several experts who taught him about transplantation, investigative hypnosis, and FBI procedures, you realize that the man has done his homework, made his plan, and worked it. Still, though I admire Chandler more, I give "Blood Work" high marks for holding my attention with a detailed story involving a transplant patient (McCaleb) and the murder victim who provided his replacement heart. Like many mysteries, like much of Chandler, "Blood Work" relies on credibility-stretching circumstances and coincidences for its glue. Beginning with the (beautiful, of course) sister of the woman shot in an ATM hold-up whose heart was "harvested" to save McCaleb's life. The sister convinces McCaleb to come out of retirement to search for the killer.McCaleb (no great spoiler here) falls in love with the sister, which is one thing Marlowe almost never does. Chandler's PI is too ethical, despite being drunk half the time, to bed most of the women who throw themselves in his path. But Connelly is writing for a less subtle, more cynical, insatiably thrill-seeking readership, and he delivers. Man, does he deliver.
What do You think about Blood Work (2002)?
What I'm learning, as I continue to read these Michael Connelly books is that outside of his Harry Bosch books, he really tells a good story and this book is no exception. This one is the story of Terry McCaleb, a retired FBI agent and serial killer hunter. Heart disease forces him into early retirement and a it takes a transplant to keep him alive. When he finds out, during his recovery, that he got his heart from a woman who was gunned down in a senseless act of violence, his old instincts kick in and he can't help but look into the case--and quickly realizes that nothing is as it seems.Some of the twists are predictable, but I think Connelly knows that, so he throws in a few more that aren't and it makes for an interesting read. The main character is compelling and filled with frailty. His physical limitations make him all the more interesting. The secondary characters were a bit pale. For instance, there's a sidekick type of character who winds up playing a key role in a few scenes, but other than that, he's not drawn out in any way. He's not sharply drawn enough to add some comic relief to the plot. He's just sort of there. You could substitute any person into that role and the book doesn't change a bit. McCaleb treats him like a teenager, even though he's not and this guy just keeps coming back for more. It's actually really bothersome. The same is true of the other cop characters in the book--there's the good one, the arrogant one who gets in the way and the studious one but that's all we learn about them. Each of them is a genre archetype and none of them ever gets past that point. The plot makes up for it though. This is a good 3.5 book and I'm happy to recommend it. It's not great, but it's well worth the read. Enjoy!
—Albert Riehle
I bought my copy of Blood Work off a used book rack at my local public library. It interested me, but I can't remember exactly why. Except that I wanted to read a mystery, as I would like to write in that genre.I got a couple chapters into the book before realizing that it had been made into a feature film, one which I had seen. The movie had left me slightly disappointed, as I didn't like the ending, turning a supposed good-guy character into the bad guy. So, when I realized I had already seen
—Dan Cooper
I don't know how I missed this one. I thought I'd read all of Connelly's stuff. I was afraid I might not like this one as well because it's not Bosch, so I was pleasantly proven wrong. This is an excellent story revolving around former FBI agent Terry McCaleb, who has recently had a heart transplant. He finds out that the heart he received came from a woman who was murdered, and the sister of that woman wants him to solve the murder. Michael Connelly's imagination is impressive. The secrets revealed in this plot are things you never would have guessed! Fantastic, edgy reading.
—Jeanette "Astute Crabbist"
