City of Bones - Hardcover

Connelly, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0752821407 ISBN 13: 9780752821405

Publisher: Little Brown, 2002

Synopsis

Detective Harry Bosch tears open a 20-year-old murder case - with an explosive ending that will leave all Bosch fans hungrily awaiting the next instalment. When the bones of a twelve-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 doesn't deter Bosch. Unearthing hidden stories, he finds the child's 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 Bosch - until a stunningly blown mission leaves him in more trouble than ever before in his turbulent career. The investigation races to a shocking conclusion and leaves Bosch on the brink of an unimaginable decision.

About this title

Review:

Since his first appearance in 1992's Edgar-winning The Black Echo, Detective Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch has joined Dennis Lehane's Patrick and Angie, George Pelecanos's Derek Strange, and Greg Rucka's Atticus Kodiak in the pantheon of new-school hard-boiled detectives. Rather than giving Bosch a clever gimmick (like Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme, who is a quadriplegic), Michael Connelly embraces the noir archetype: Bosch, an L.A. homicide detective, is a chain-smoking loner who refuses to play by his superiors' rules. Although he has quit smoking, Harry's still the same tightlipped outsider, taking each crime as a personal affront as he tries to cleanse his beloved city of the darkness he sees engulfing it.

In City of Bones, Connelly's eighth Bosch title, Bosch and his well-dressed partner, Jerry Edgar, are working to identify a child's skeleton, buried for 20 years in the forest off Hollywood's Wonderland Drive, and to bring the killer to belated justice. For Bosch this is more than just another homicide, as the mystery child, beaten and abandoned, comes to represent much of what he sees as evil in his city. Add in a tragic love affair with a fellow cop, complications from overzealous media, and the growing feeling that he's fighting a losing battle about which no one cares, and the usually stoic Bosch is pushed to his limits. This isn't the strongest plot Connelly has concocted for Bosch, but it leads to an ending the whole series has been building toward. The conclusion may not shock longtime fans, but it will leave them wondering where the series will go from here. --Benjamin Reese

About the Author:

A former police reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Connelly is the author of seven acclaimed Harry Bosch novels: The Black Echo, The Black Ice, The Concrete Blonde, The Last Coyote, Trunk Music, Angels Flight, and A Darkness More Than Night, as well as The Poet, Blood Work and Void Moon. He lives in Los Angeles.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0752821407
• ISBN 13: 9780752821405
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400