Customer Reviews
Great serial characters - By: Red, 28 Aug 2008 
I've read all of the Harry Bosch series with moderate to ecstatic enjoyment, so I figured I should check out the beginning of the series & read them through. The books all revolve around Detective Bosch on the Homicide Squad of the Hollywood division, having apparently been demoted from the elite LAPD Robbery Homicide division for his questionable actionin a high-profile serial killer case a year previously. (The events of that "Dollmaker" case are detailedin the book The Concrete Blonde, & be warned that key information about that case is revealedin this book.) This backstory establishes Bosch as a highly capable high profile detective who's somewhat of a loose cannon & marked man for LAPD Internal Affairs.
Once it's clear that there's been a murder, Bosch latches onto the case like a pit bull, pushing it through the procedural red tape.
Connelly spent many years covering local crime for the LA Times, & asin the other books of his I've read, has a good eye & ear for bringing all the little bits & pieces of procedure to life. The investigations always seem to point at a series of obvious suspects, but as any good thriller writer will tell you, it isn't always the butler that done it!! Bosch always seems to find himself tangled up with the FBI agents tasked with the investigation into his investigations ! Meanwhile, Internal Affairs has targeted him big time, & he spends a lot of energy evading their slimy grasp. There's a good deal of internal police politics at work, & Connelly does a nice job of bringing the depressing realities of this into the story.
Somewhat less convincing is the character of Bosch himself. He's the ultimate embodiment of the maverick, anti-establishment, "lone wolf"cop, always rubbing superiors the wrong way for no good reason, & generally being obnoxious & provocativein a way that only gets himin hotter water. For someone as self-avowedly committed to justice as he is, you'd think he would be a little smarter about when to mouth off, since the trouble he gets himself into only diverts him from pursuing justice. And of course, he drinks a bunch, smokes a bunch, listens to jazz, & doesn't have a lot of luck with women. Conspiracy-thrillerish by the end. Readers of serial books, Lee Child`s, `Jack Reacher` books are always excellent, as are the `Rebus` books by Ian Rankin, much more violent are the `Soft Target` thrillers by Conrad Jones, but the common threads are the common characters that make us go back for more of the same. Bosch is addictive reading & this is an excellent novel.
It also doesn't help that Connelly gives away what should be a shocking twist toward the end by providing a very obvious clue halfway through the book. These flaws, combined with the coincidence the story is built on & the cliché nature of Bosch, resultin a book that worksin fits & starts, but isn't nearly as good as it could have been.
Very strongly recommended for crime-fiction fans - By: one-eyed Jack, 01 Aug 2008 As of the date of this review, Michael Connelly has written & published eighteen fictional novels most of which feature LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. It all began backin 1992 with The Black Echo & quite simply if you like Connelly today then you will like Connelly 'then' just as much.
This is despite the fact that it's a tale of eventsin the early 1990s with heavy references to events of the early 1970s. More specifically, Bosch is a Los Angeles detective turning 40 with powerful memories of his experiences as a tunnel ratin Vietnam some twenty years earlier & from which the title of this novel draws its name. But the drawing of the characters & their relationships with one another is of high quality, a skill which,in my humble opinion, only a minority of Connelly's peersin the field of crime thrillers pull off as successfully as he does. In any thriller series this is the element that probably defines success or failure more than any other, & since Connelly has been writing tales surrounding Bosch for over fifteen years, it's safe to assume that he's cracked this difficult task & he demonstrates this from the word goin his debut novel. It's easy to summarise this story's plot - the body of a man is found & Bosch, by chance, is assigned to the case to find the man's killer or killers. It's not long before Bosch brings about an association with the dead man (a Vietnam tunnel rat who worked with Bosch two decades earlier) to an audacious bank robbery the previous summer & a similar heist that is planned for the imminent future. Bosch has it all figured out, & has to solve all this isin the midst of an Internal Affairs investigation coupled with high-level corruption among those who might have a vested interestin the two bank robberies. The story covers about one week, my one criticism being the absence of any chapters & the use, instead, of rather long 'parts' which for people like myself who often read booksin snatches of thirty minutes at a time, can be slightly irritating. Anyone who invests lengthy periods of time to reading won't mind at all, I'm sure.
The Black Ice is Connelly's second novel, published way backin 1993, but it's just as good to read today as it must have been back then. It's a tale of police corruption & the manufacture & transportation of what was then a new Class A drug today known as Crystal Meth (crystal methamphetamine); as a marketing ploy food colouring was added during the crystallization process, turning the methamphetamine black; "black ice" is supposedly more potent.
Bosch has this uncanny ability to sense when a fatal crime is not as it seems to everyone else (including his immediate superiors). In this case, a narcotics police officer is found shot deadin a motel room & everyone except Bosch classifies it as suicide. He refuses to stay away from the investigation, & when one of his colleagues is found dead minutes after Bosch had been seenin public to have assaulted him, the hunt is on because Bosch is suddenly a prime suspect. Fortunately the heat he finds himselfin isn't that generated by the Hollywood media but from the weatherin Baja California, across the borderin Mexico. He's sure that the kingpin behind the murders & the drug-running is right herein the two towns that straddle the two nation divide, Calexico & Mexicali. And when Bosch eventually finds out the truth, well, I for one was left utterly stunned when I realised the deception that the author had successfully carried off for just about the entire length of the novel. I like being trickedin this way & I have to admit I hadn't seen it coming, so the conclusion lifted my estimation of all that had gone before & made for very satisfying reading. If you like contemporary crime fiction with a taste of classic Chandler then you'rein for a treat.
The Concrete Blonde is the thirdin the Harry Bosch series & is as good as anything I've read this year, the only book that has matched it is The Lincoln Lawyer, by the same author. It does, however, remind me vaguely of two other novels of times past: Mark Billingham's Scaredy Cat & Mo Hayder's The Treatment. I'll say nothing more other than quote the punchline from the cover of Scaredy Cat - "Serial killers normally work alone". But The Concrete Blonde isin fact heavily built around a courtroom drama that spreads its full length, because Bosch (or more correctly the LAPD) is being sued by the widow of a man he killed four years earlier, a man he was sure was a multiple murderer known as the Dollmaker. The plaintiff has a hot-shot female lawyer on a big retainer to represent her case for the prosecutionin this civil (i.e. not criminal) trial, while Bosch must depend on a less-than-impressive, overweight & sweaty public defender who is paid the same salary whether he wins or loses. As the trial progresses, the reader becomes more & more resigned to an inevitable loss for the defendant, but the conclusion is anything but predictable.
Runningin parallel to the eventsin the courtroom, Bosch is investigating a new case that bears worryingly similar hallmarks to the works of the deceased Dollmaker. A new body is found, & as the investigation develops, not only the reader but even Bosch himself start wondering if he shot the right man four years ago. I had at least two suspectsin mind & oddly enough Bosch chose these two as well, although I wondered if this was clever reader manipulation on the part of the author. In the end I was caught out, it was someone not even on my 'might be' list. I have to admit that I enjoy courtroom theatrics, & even though Bosch didn't really care if he lost, Connelly still manages to make the trial gripping & sometimes moving as well, as unknown secrets about Bosch's life are cold-bloodedly made public. Characterisation is of a very high standard throughout, not least of course that of the tortured soul that is Hieronymus Bosch. Strongly recommended.
Bosch Begins - By: Marc J. Nellist, 21 Dec 2006 I started reading Michael Connelly after having read the 'Jack Reacher' series by Lee Child. This triple volume contains the first three books to feature Connelly's 'Harry Bosch'.
Connelly is an exceptional crime writer & with Bosch has created one the most compelling charactersin contemporary crime fiction. Bosch, an LAPD detective, works on the edge & has a few issues with authority. His background, which is explainedin the first book 'The Black Echo' lends great depth to his character.
Connelly puts a lot of research into his books & this showsin the intricate storylines. The first two books are excellent reads, but the third, 'The Concrete Blonde, is the book which really puts Connelly & Bosch on the map.
Anyone who is new to Connelly should start with these books as they provide a great introduction to some of his characters & the Bosch stories are better if read chronologically. The character of Bosch does evolve over the course of the books & there are a number of recurring characters.
Whilst I would be surprised if any true fans of crime fiction are yet to discover Connelly, those of you who haven't will hopefully not be disappointed.
Excellent character-driven thrillers - By: , 11 Aug 2003 Connelly has come up with a great characterin Hieronymus 'Harry' Bosch. Exceptionally bright, methodic at times & completely random at others, he's a taciturn, demanding & sympathetic cop.
He doesn't follow rules & upsets his superiors/top brass - which sounds as though Connelly has writtenin cliches but once you start reading these novels you'll find that description is anything but the truth.
Each book can be read as a stand alone &in no particular order BUT I recommend you start with the The Black Echo & move on from there. Bosch evolves as each book unfolds.
I still come back to these novels when I've run out of other stuff to read & it's as much the atmosphere each book generates as the story itself & Bosch's attempts to unravel things that does so.
I really enjoy these stories & I hope you do too.
