Time saver tip: if you've read my review of any Harry Bosch book, you've read 'em all. Since I don't reveal plots and reserve my comments to the overall book/author, characterization, style, etc...I just don't feel the need to repeat myself as in most cases series books if any good at all do remain consistent. The star ratings might change, but not my opinion of the series as a whole.Michael Connelly is a well know and very popular author in the mystery/detective and police procedural genres. Exploding onto the scene in the early nineties with his first six novels, and topping it off just recently with his 18th Bosch novel (The Black Box), Connelly has garnered most awards worth getting. Let's face it, the awards are well deserved, especially for those first novels (more on that later). Having emerged onto the fictional world after a career as a journalist, culminating with his job as crime reporter for the LA times, and admitting to becoming interested in writing fiction as a result of reading Raymond Chandler early on in his journalistic career, Michael Connelly has since involved himself in several collaborations: notable the television series Level 9, and as co-writer with Val McDermid's Wire In the Blood series (and that spawned the wildly popular grim, noir BBC television series of the same name). If you're into Noir than this TV series is a must see.Connelly has a knack for writing suspenseful tales that take quite a few twists and turns before being resolved with a stellar Who-Done-It that has most readers guessing till the very end (at least in his earlier books).Heironymous (Harry) Bosch, the hero in this series, is named after a Renaissance painter who specialized in earthly sins, debauchery, fanciful and gruesome visions of hell, violent consequences from high above if not detailed looks at the tortures reserved for earthly residents. Score 1 for Connelly in choosing a very apropos name for our own tortured detective Harry Bosch.Bosch is a complicated and conflicted character, a character that slowly develops across this series but whose emotive origin lies in the Viet Cong tunnels where Harry got his education in fear: underground, claustrophic, dark, drenched with blood, gruesome deaths, peopled with a savage enemy crawling within the absence of all light, hunting for the American soldiers like bloodthirsty rats. From these dark tunnels emerges Harry Bosch, LAPD detective, bent on setting the world right. From this darkness where pacific military command has sent Bosch to discover the inevitable conflict between a military order and the reality of carrying out that order, we find a detective in perpetual defiance of LAPD authority.The Harry Bosch series, for me, are divided into two sets: the first 4 books, and the rest that follow. As mentioned earlier, the classic early 90's novels were better for me. Books starting with The Black Echo on through The Last Coyote all inherit the tortuous origins of Harry's artistic namesake. Reading these books I could actually feel my heart begin to race as I sped towards the inevitable ending, ones that actually kept you guessing to the very end. One reviewer (sorry, can't remember who it was) says the following of these earlier book titles:[...]Even the titles of the books used to be cleverer. Compare The Drop (a simple reference to Deferred Retirement Option Plan) to The Concrete Blonde (a reference to both lady justice statue on the courthouse and the body of a blonde entombed in concrete. [...]Compare that to the later books in the series where we find a Harry Bosch notably mellower in his older age, where we find endings easily guessed at, where procedure begins to trump a superb plot. Bosch no longer smokes, doesn't drink and drive, doesn't slap people around anymore, where his defiance of LAPD authority is tempered by retirement, and let's face it, where my heart just doesn't race as often anymore. Let's say that his later novels are beginning to show an author's haste (is it me, or are the novels shorter and shorter?)Don't get me wrong, I still love reading the latest Bosch novel. Where the earlier novels have a few things that can be improved on (dialogue could have been better) the later novels are polished, almost a little too much so. After 18 Bosch novels, is Connelly tiring? Maybe.Beginning with the last 90's novel (Angels Flight) in which we are introduced to Bosch's latest romantic interest, Eleanor Wish, with whom Bosch is to have a daughter this mellowing process takes root. Connelly is absolutely right to introduce this notable character shift in Bosch from this book forward because as I can attest to in my own personal life: when you see your child born, a fundamental shift takes place in a man. For me, I was reborn from a devilish bachelor into a man who now bore the responsibility of an innocent life. It completely turned around my life for the better. And so it is with Harry Bosch. It is the presence of his daughter that transforms him from Heironymous to Harry.Overall, I highly recommend this series.
I’ve designed a gadget that will notify me when I run across clichés in crime thrillers with a *BEEP*. Let’s give it a test run on this Michael Connelly novel, shall we?So this is the first book in the series featuring a LAPD detective named Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch *BEEP*. .. Shit, why is it going off already? Oh, right. Quirky name for a main character. It seems to be calibrated correctly. Let’s proceed.In this novel published in 1992, Harry is a Vietnam veteran *BEEP* traumatized by his war experiences *BEEP* as a so-called tunnel rat who fought the VC in their network of underground passages. Harry is a driven detective whose inability to compromise often puts him at odds with his fellow cops *BEEP*. He has no family or life outside of his work *BEEP*, and he’s a borderline burn-out who lives on a diet of coffee, cigarettes and beer. *BEEP*Harry gets called to check out a dead body in a drainage pipe that everyone on the scene instantly assumes is a junkie who overdosed, but he has a hunch that it was actually a murder. *BEEP* Part of the reason Harry is convinced it was homicide is that he recognizes the victim as one of his fellow Vietnam tunnel rats. *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* Damn, the old war buddy schtick really swung the needle into the red on this thing.Harry quickly finds evidence that the victim was involved in a high profile bank robbery that had involved tunneling into a vault and emptying the safe deposit boxes. When Harry tries to get the FBI’s attention, he meets a beautiful female agent *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* named Eleanor Wish, but he also lands in hot water with his lieutenant who gets angry and yells at him a lot even though he hasn’t done anything wrong . *BEEP*. He also becomes the target of overzealous Internal Affairs cops *BEEP* that hound him even as he works with the FBI to try and solve the case. This quickly leads to a romance with Agent Wish *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*..and *BEEP*….Uh oh.. I think it’s overloading…*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* Is that smoke?? *BEEP* *BEEP* BEEP* Where’s the off switch? *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP**BEEEEEeeeeeeepppppp…pp..pp*Crap. I think Connelly broke it.Anyhow, the odd thing about his book is that even though it’s got just about every cop thriller cliché you’ve ever heard of, it still works pretty well. It’s entertaining in a straight forward kind of way, and Harry’s gruff and grouchy persona is kind of refreshing since most cop/detectives are portrayed as unrelenting smart asses these days.A couple of things drag it down a bit. First, this is the third Connelly novel I’ve read set in the ‘90s and like the other two, there’s something about his stuff that seems more dated than a Perry Como album. I think it’s because he obviously liked describing the cutting edge tech of the day like police computer databases that are practically antiques now, and the way he dwells on them makes you feel like you’re watching a T. Rex walk the earth. The second one involves Harry doing something very stupid and later you realize that Connelly only had him do it for the sake of setting up a climactic scene near the end. (view spoiler)[Harry figures out the identity of an inside man in law enforcement while they’re staking out another potential bank robbery. The obvious and smart thing to do would be to play it cool, alert the other cops quietly and get some people working on bringing him in and trying to find out what he knows. Instead, Harry runs to a pay phone (Yet another dated element.) and calls the guy just so he can tell him that he knows. Why? There’s nothing to be gained, and all he’s done is warn the bad guy. Later, I realized that Connelly wanted Harry and this character to have a big final confrontation, and he needed to have the bad guy know that Harry was onto him. Rather than coming up with some clever plot point to make this happen, Connelly just has his hero go tell the bad guy for no reason whatsoever. Lazy. Very lazy. (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about The Black Echo (2002)?
There are certain genre writers who, within their given genres, transcend, through phenomenal writing and a deep understanding of the human condition, the formulaic structures and cliches of the run-of-the-mill horror story, science fiction epic, or murder mystery. Stephen King, Peter Straub, and Dan Simmons are examples in the horror genre. Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, and Neal Stephenson are examples in the sci-fi set. James Lee Burke, Elizabeth George, and Michael Connelly exemplify the best in mystery writing.Connelly, best-selling author of over 25 books, has been setting the bar pretty high in the mystery genre for almost three decades, and I have no idea why I have NEVER, until now, read a single book by him. Shame on me. I rectified that serious deficiency by picking up his first novel (written in '92), "The Black Echo", the first to introduce his beloved protagonist Heironymous "Harry" Bosch, an LAPD homicide detective who isn't afraid to shake things up in his city, department, and private life. Bosch is not a popular cop. He doesn't have friends. He doesn't date. And he's pissed so many people off over the years---criminals AND fellow cops---that he constantly has to look over his shoulder for the killers or the Internal Affairs officers out to get him. When he's not working, he's sitting at home, listening to his extensive jazz collection, drinking copious amounts of beer, and suffering from chronic insomnia. Needless to say, he works a lot. So, when he gets the call to check out a DB (dead body) at Mulholland Dam at an ungodly hour during a holiday weekend, he jumps at the chance. What starts out, though, as a seemingly simple "dump-and-drive" escalates into something more. The body is someone Bosch knows. Rather, knew, during the dark days of 'Nam, of which he is still suffering bouts of PTSD. During the war, Bosch and the vic were "tunnel rats", soldiers assigned to clearing out the underground caves of the Viet Cong, a particularly dangerous and terrifying job. Bosch quickly uncovers a vicious crew of bank thieves comprised of ex-Vietnam veterans, nearly all of them tunnel rats. Their target isn't money, however, but millions of dollars in diamonds brought over to this country by Vietnamese higher-ups protected by the U.S. government. Soon, Bosch not only has two unscrupulous IAD officers breathing down his neck (for a completely unrelated incident) but also agents of the FBI and the CIA are butting in with jurisdictional nonsense that are distracting everyone from the real investigation. On top of that, Harry soon suspects that someone within his own department is working with the bad guys. Most of these people wouldn't mind seeing him dead, for various reasons. Bosch doesn't give a shit, though, as long as they stay out of his way and let him do his fucking job. Fans of good mystery, suspense, and crime thrillers certainly won't be disappointed with Connelly. If you're like me, you may just find a new favorite author.
—Scott Rhee
So, this was okay. Nothing exceptional or memorable, pretty much the epitome of "commercial fiction." If you want an LAPD detective story, here is an LAPD detective story.Harry Bosch (yes, his real name is Hieronymus, his mother, who we learn later was a prostitute, liked the Dutch painter - ahaha, characterization!) is a child of institutions. He grew up in the system (see: mother, prostitute), then joined the Army and did a tour in Viet Nam as a "tunnel rat," then became a cop. But even though he got as far as homicide detective, he's "not one of the family." His superiors don't like him because he doesn't "get along to go along." He got suspended and investigated by Internal Affairs, who still doesn't like him, because he thinks he's a "one-man army."Yeah, we've seen this character before. Connelly even lampshades it lightly with a mention that Bosch made some money when Hollywood did a TV show based on a few of his cases.So, we've got the Cop Who Doesn't Go Along With the System, which means of course he always digs deeper when his bosses don't want him to. In this case, it's a fellow tunnel rat from his 'Nam days who turns up dead in a tunnel over the Mulholland Reservoir that brings Harry into a case that turns out to involve a bank job (digging tunnels under the bank, naturally) and skullduggery among the various species of rats who escaped Viet Nam.The plot is well constructed enough, with a few twists that are mostly plausible, aside from some rather large coincidences. Harry is antagonized by IA, and there's an assistant police chief who is almost a parody as the representative of highly political police brass getting in the way of Harry Bosch solving crimes. He hooks up with a lady FBI agent who is integral to the plot; their one-nighter leads to expressions of as much sentiment as a flat character like Bosch can manage.Basically, Bosch has very little personality beyond what you could summarize on an index card. This is also true of all the other characters. The Black Echo is a set of generic crime thriller archetypes going through their paces in the story. The Hollywood setting is likewise very routine, exercising every trope you expect in an LA noir story.It was a decent listen, and I might pick up another Harry Bosch story some time when I want a relatively mindless LA cop story, but it doesn't even begin to invest me in the characters or the setting the way some other series, like say, Hillerman's did, and the writing is merely workmanlike.
—David
This is my 3rd book in this series that I have read. I enjoy the Harry Bosch stories but haven't been reading them in order. This was a great read with lots of typical twists and turns of Bosch books you are used too. I had read "Nine Dragons" before this book (#14 in the series I think) and in Black Echo I got find out the back story of Bosch and Elanor Wish and their daughter, who plays a big role in Nine Dragons. This book was exciting and fast paced, with a couple good laughs along the way and an ending that kept me guessing.
—Kelly
