City of Bones - Hardcover

Connelly, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316154059 ISBN 13: 9780316154055

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2002

Synopsis

When the bones of a 12-year-old boy are found scattered in the Hollywood Hills, Harry Bosch is drawn into a case that brings up the darkest memories from his own haunted past.The bones have been buried for years, but the cold case doesnt deter Bosch. Unearthing hidden stories, he finds the childs identity and reconstructs his fractured life, determined that he not be forgotten. At the same time, a new love affair with a female cop begins to blossom for Boschuntil a stunningly blown mission leaves Bosch in more trouble that ever before in his turbulent career.The investigation races to a shocking conclusion and leaves Bosch on the brink of an unimaginable decisionone that will leave readers hungrily awaiting Michael Connellys next masterpiece.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Connelly is the author of the bestsellers A Darkness More Than Night, Void Moon, Angels Flight, Blood Work, and The Poet. Connelly has won every major prize for crime fiction, including an Edgar Award, a Nero Wolfe prize, a Macavity Award, and an Anthony Award. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

Harry Bosch is at the top of his form which is great news for Connelly fans who might have been wondering how much life the dour, haunted LAPD veteran had left in him. His latest adventure is as dark and angst-ridden as any of Bosch's past outings, but it also crackles with energy especially in the details of police procedure and internal politics that animate virtually every page. What other crime writer could make such dramatic use of the fact that the front door of a house trailer swings out rather than in, creating problems for a two-man team of detectives? Who else would create to such credible narrative effect an egotistic celebrity coroner who jeopardizes an investigation because she lets a TV camera crew from Court TV follow her around, or an overage female rookie cop so in love with danger that she commits an unthinkable act? When the bones of an abused 12-year-old boy who disappeared in 1980 turn up in the woods above Hollywood (near a street named Wonderland, where former governor Jerry Brown used to live), the case stirs up Bosch's memories of his own troubled childhood. Also, as his captain so aptly points out, Harry is the LAPD's prime "shit magnet," an investigator who attracts muck and trouble wherever he goes. So it's no great surprise when the investigation takes a couple of nasty turns, right up through the last chapter. Connelly is such a careful, quiet writer that he can slow down the story to sketch in some relatively minor characters a retired doctor, a couple who lived through their foster children without missing a beat. (One-day laydown Apr. 16)Forecast: Connelly doesn't need much help in hitting the charts, but Little, Brown is going all out anyway, with a massive television, radio and print ad campaign, transit ads in New York and a 10-city author tour. Expect blockbuster sales and blockbuster satisfaction.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The trouble with Harry: wrapped up in a fresh new love affair and a case involving the scattered bones of a long-dead child, he finds that he must make a momentous decision.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

*Starred Review* "Child cases haunted you. They hollowed you out and scarred you. There was no bulletproof vest thick enough to stop you from being pierced." LAPD detective Harry Bosch gets pierced in the worst way this time. After a doctor out walking his dog in Laurel Canyon finds a human bone, forensic anthropologists unearth the rest of the skeleton and piece together part of the story: a 12-year-old boy was murdered around 1980 after being viciously abused for most of his brief life. Bosch picks up the trail, identifying the boy but encountering both investigatory and bureaucratic roadblocks as he attempts to close in on a suspect. Meanwhile, Bosch strikes up a romance with a rookie cop--against department regulations--and quickly finds himself in the midst of a personal and professional crisis. It doesn't help that, as he learns more about the dead boy, he keeps hearing echoes from his own troubled past. After spinning his wheels just a bit in his last two novels, Connelly regains his stride here. Like Ian Rankin's John Rebus, Bosch never stops feeling the bruises he has acquired through multiple encounters with evil. His view of the world darkens with each case, and he feels more and more powerless: "True evil could never be taken out of the world. At best he was wading into the dark waters of the abyss with two leaking buckets in his hands." Harry wanders deeper into that abyss this time than ever before, and it drives him to a shocking decision that will leave series fans reeling. Hard-boiled cop fiction at its most gripping. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

City of Bones

By Michael Connelly

Little, Brown

Copyright © 2002 Hieronymus, Inc.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-316-15405-9

Chapter One

The old lady had changed her mind about dying but by then it was toolate. She had dug her fingers into the paint and plaster of thenearby wall until most of her fingernails had broken off. Then shehad gone for the neck, scrabbling to push the bloodied fingertips upand under the cord. She broke four toes kicking at the walls. Shehad tried so hard, shown such a desperate will to live, that it madeHarry Bosch wonder what had happened before. Where was thatdetermination and will and why had it deserted her until after shehad put the extension cord noose around her neck and kicked over thechair? Why had it hidden from her?

These were not official questions that would be raised in his deathreport. But they were the things Bosch couldn't avoid thinking aboutas he sat in his car outside the Splendid Age Retirement Home onSunset Boulevard east of the Hollywood Freeway. It was 4:20 p.m. onthe first day of the year. Bosch had drawn holiday call-out duty.

The day more than half over and that duty consisted of two suicideruns-one a gunshot, the other the hanging. Both victims were women.In both cases there was evidence of depression and desperation.Isolation. New Year's Day was always a big day for suicides. Whilemost people greeted the day with a sense of hope and renewal, therewere those who saw it as a good day to die, some-like the old lady-not realizing their mistake until it was too late.

Bosch looked up through the windshield and watched as the latestvictim's body, on a wheeled stretcher and covered in a greenblanket, was loaded into the coroner's blue van. He saw there wasone other occupied stretcher in the van and knew it was from thefirst suicide-a thirty-four-year-old actress who had shot herselfwhile parked at a Hollywood overlook on Mulholland Drive. Bosch andthe body crew had followed one case to the other.

Bosch's cell phone chirped and he welcomed the intrusion into histhoughts on small deaths. It was Mankiewicz, the watch sergeant atthe Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department.

"You finished with that yet?"

"I'm about to clear."

"Anything?"

"A changed-my-mind suicide. You got something else?"

"Yeah. And I didn't think I should go out on the radio with it. Mustbe a slow day for the media-getting more what's-happening callsfrom reporters than I am getting service calls from citizens. Theyall want to do something on the first one, the actress onMulholland. You know, a death-of-a-Hollywood-dream story. And they'dprobably jump all over this latest call, too."

"Yeah, what is it?"

"A citizen up in Laurel Canyon. On Wonderland. He just called up andsaid his dog came back from a run in the woods with a bone in itsmouth. The guy says it's human-an arm bone from a kid."

Bosch almost groaned. There were four or five call outs like this ayear. Hysteria always followed by simple explanation: animal bones.Through the windshield he saluted the two body movers from thecoroner's office as they headed to the front doors of the van.

"I know what you're thinking, Harry. Not another bone run. You'vedone it a hundred times and it's always the same thing. Coyote,deer, whatever. But listen, this guy with the dog, he's an MD. Andhe says there's no doubt. It's a humerus. That's the upper arm bone.He says it's a child, Harry. And then, get this. He said ..."

There was silence while Mankiewicz apparently looked for his notes.Bosch watched the coroner's blue van pull off into traffic. WhenMankiewicz came back he was obviously reading.

"The bone's got a fracture clearly visible just above the medialepicondyle, whatever that is."

Bosch's jaw tightened. He felt a slight tickle of electric currentgo down the back of his neck.

"That's off my notes, I don't know if I am saying it right. Thepoint is, this doctor says it was just a kid, Harry. So could youhumor us and go check out this humerus?"

Bosch didn't respond.

"Sorry, had to get that in."

"Yeah, that was funny, Mank. What's the address?"

Mankiewicz gave it to him and told him he had already dispatched apatrol team.

"You were right to keep it off the air. Let's try to keep it thatway."

Mankiewicz said he would. Bosch closed his phone and started thecar. He glanced over at the entrance to the retirement home beforepulling away from the curb. There was nothing about it that lookedsplendid to him. The woman who had hung herself in the closet of hertiny bedroom had no next of kin, according to the operators of thehome. In death, she would be treated the way she had been in life,left alone and forgotten.

Bosch pulled away from the curb and headed toward Laurel Canyon.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from City of Bonesby Michael Connelly Copyright © 2002 by Hieronymus, Inc.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316154059
• ISBN 13: 9780316154055
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464