 "Connelly Keeps Blowing Me Away" | 2009-12-30 |
| - Reviewed By Jonathan E. Watkins from Nashville, TN |
After reading a few of Connelly's more recent books, I decided to go back and read them in order. I'm really glad I chose to do this, especially with the Harry Bosch novels. There is a great flow to the Bosch novels that I have not encountered in too many other detective series. And I keep thinking I've read the best Connelly novel until I read the next one of course.
Which is what brings me to "City of Bones." I can't figure out why none of the Bosch novels have made it to film. Maybe it's all for the better considering the one Connelly novel that was translated to the big screen was the dreadful "Blood Work." But "City of Bones" just screams to be a movie. And I think if you are going to pick a random Bosch novel to see if Connelly works for you, then "City of Bones" would be a great pick.
It's got a wonderful stand a lone story, and as if Connelly hasn't raised the stakes high enough for Bosch in the past, he raises them even higher in this novel. This story has everything a mystery lover should need including the lone rebellious hero and a couple of great twists at the end to make you want to delve right in to the next novel in the series. It's too bad I had already read "The Narrows," so the final revelation in this book didn't suprise me too much, but that's my own fault. Great stuff. Can't wait to read "Lost Light." |
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 "Harry Draws a Cold Case" | 2009-11-23 |
| - Reviewed By Sam Sattler from Spring, Texas |
When a dog returns to its waiting owner with a human bone clutched in its jaws, Detective Harry Bosch inherits one of the coldest of cases, the 20-year-old murder of a young boy who was never reported missing. Bosch has seen everything during his long career with the LAPD but he is still capable of feeling a sense of outrage about the murders he investigates for the city. And what he learns about the short life of this young murder victim will hit him particularly hard.
It soon becomes obvious that the boy lived not just a short life, but a very painful one. There is evidence of numerous breaks in the bones recovered by the police and some of the fractures appear to have been suffered when the boy was only two years old. Bosch knows there is a killer out there who believes that he will never be caught - and that the killer is likely to be one of the boy's parents. What he does not know is the boy's name or who his parents are.
There can be no doubt that Michael Connelly is a master of the police procedural and much of "City of Bones" is textbook police procedural. The reader is intimately exposed to the time-consuming and tedious process that is a police investigation, including the dozens of false leads that have to be worked before the real ones can be followed. Detective Bosh and his partner, Jerry Edgar, are determined that, against all odds, they will bring this boy's killer to justice and, as one piece of the puzzle after another slowly begins to fall into place, they seem to be getting there. But at what cost to the boy's family and to the detectives, themselves?
"City of Bones" is a superb procedural but what saves it from the possibility of becoming tedious are side-plots involving two women well known Harry Bosch. One is the egotistical coroner he is forced to work with, a woman so determined to become a national celebrity that she has her own documentary cameraman follow her around from case to case. The other is an overage police rookie who manages to attach herself to both Bosch and the case he is working. Between these complications, the internal politics of the LAPD and the 20-year-old murder case, Bosch has plenty on his plate.
What longtime Harry Bosch fans will remember most about "City of Bones," however, is likely to be the revelation Harry makes at the very end of the story.
Reader, beware: Don't go there first.
Rated at: 3.5 |
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| "Valuable lessons learned" | 2009-11-23 |
| - Reviewed By rocking granny from Panama City, FL United States |
| The more I read, the more intrigued I became by the process, assumptions, mistakes, in trying to solve a crime. That I became involved in the whole thinking process as events unfolded was a journey to the truth well traveled along with Bosch. |
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| "Harry,Hold Fast!" | 2009-11-22 |
| - Reviewed By John F. Rooney |
In "City of Bones" (2002) Michael Connelly is at it again, giving his readers clever plotting, believable characters, fascinating details, a breakneck pace, and haunted homicide detective Harry Bosch, on his usual mission of speaking for the dead and bringing evildoers to justice. Some of the characters would be well advised to get out of his way because in his wake come trouble and sometimes even death.
You wouldn't want to be Harry's detective partner, because self-absorbed, vain Harry often keeps his partners in the dark and goes barging off on his own.
In this one a dog finds a human bone in the woods. It turns out to be from the body of a decades-old murdered twelve-year-old boy whose skeletal remains indicate years of severe physical abuse. Bosch has to I.D. the child, the abuser, and a killer who has fractured the boy's skull. He hooks up with a rookie cop (a boot) Julia Brasher (Isn't that a trait name in this story?), and they have a brief affair. Harry has never been lucky in love.
Harry investigates a man with a past who lives near the body find, the boy's father, mother, sister, and a childhood buddy. A skateboard becomes a crucial piece of evidence. As usual along the way Harry ruffles the feathers of superiors especially arch-enemy Deputy Chief Irving.
Just as you wouldn't want to be Harry's partner, you wouldn't want to be his gal either for reasons you'll discover as you read the book.
Readers learn a lot of cop vocabulary: "crossing the tube" means walking in front of a gun barrel, "pull the pin" means retiring, "going Code 7" means leaving the force, and cops are "the blue religion."
L.A. is Harry's turf, a city of bones and ghosts too. Harry, looking for redemption is a veteran of the tunnel warfare in Viet Nam. He's so tough he got rid of the "hold fast" tattoos on his knuckles by hitting his fists against a wall.
"Child cases haunted you. They hollowed you out and scarred you. There was no bulletproof vest thick enough to stop you from being pierced." Harry's job is "to take evil out of the world."
"People chose their own path...Everybody's got a cage that keeps out the sharks. Those who open the door and venture out do so at their own risk."
Connelly's books pick up velocity as they go on, and the suspense gets more intense. There's a surprise at the very end so "hold fast" for it.
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| "Excellent!" | 2009-10-21 |
| - Reviewed By JBG from Earth |
A very good crime fiction book. Connelly fans should buy this book without any hesitation if you don't have it already. Why is it so good?
1) Connelly is very good at creating 3 dimensional, believable, realistic characters and this book is no different.
2) A very realistic behind the scene look in the inner workings of a police department, he's supposed to have been a crime beat writer.
3) Logical plot. His books are not as fast flowing or edge of the seat exciting or scary as some thrillers, but they can't be if they are crime fiction. Rather, he takes you through the investigation step by step, going through the process that his detectives go through so you can see how they solve the crime.
Cons: The thing is, Bosch is not your spiffy "yes sir", toe the blue line cop. And so, even though you want Bosch not to stir the pot and just get on with his detecting he does his best to sabotage his position in the force and your wishes, well, c'est la vie, apparently Connelly likes to put angst in his readers' lives.
I'm not going to spoil the book, if you must know what the book is about you can read the intro. All I'm trying to get across is why this book is good. A must buy. |
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 "Bosch left me hanging!!" | 2009-09-08 |
| - Reviewed By Big Panda Bear from San Francisco, CA USA |
| This is my 6th or 7th Michael Connelly book since becoming "addicted" to his easy reads & twisted plot endings. The only one worse than City of Bones was Chasing The Dime which I left on P. 192 a couple months ago. City of Bones is, generally, the same good read but the person finally pegged as the killer in the end wss never proven to me---the most incomplete villain ever!! At the risk of invading a writer's mind, I think Detective Edgewood should have been the killer of the boy as well as the eventual "killer". It would have made for a more intriguing subplot with the two of them connected in a sinister, perverse way!!! lol. Chasing The Dime, a non-Bosch story, was bogged down in way too many pages of boring technological details of nanochips and patents. It did not seem to be Connelly's forte. That said, every other Connelly book has been a fun, entertaining page-turner. |
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