Review of The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly (1994, St Martin’s Paperbacks)

It’s four years after Harry Bosch shot dead Norman Church, a serial killer named The Dollmaker. Now he’s on trial for his unlawful death, Church’s wife seeking compensation from the LAPD. On the opening day of proceedings a new body is discovered under the floor in a building burned out in the Rodney King riots. It appears to be another victim of The Dollmaker, but the time of death is seemingly two years ago. It’s not just Honey Chandler, the widow’s savvy lawyer, who is trying to sink Bosch. As the trial unfolds, Bosch investigates the new murder, aware that there are probably more victims out there and the second killer will strike again, and unsure who to trust given whoever the new murderer is must be in or close to the original investigative team.

The Concrete Blonde is the third book in the long running Harry Bosch series. I first read over twenty years ago and it's as good as I remember it to be. Connelly weaves together a well plotted police procedural with a feisty courtroom drama. Bosch is on trial for shooting dead an unarmed man, Norman Church, believed to be the serial killer, The Dollmaker. On the opening day of the trial another body is discovered that appears to be a victim of The Dollmaker, but was murdered after Church’s death. The new body is clearly designed to muddy waters, sink Bosch, and sow distrust in the police, who know that the new killer must have had insider knowledge and might be one of their colleagues. The pressure mounting on Bosch is also placing his current relationship under severe strain. Connelly draws on his experience as a veteran police and courts reporter for the LA Times to produce a highly compelling, tense, and expertly plotted tale. There isn’t a single element out of place and the twists and turns keep coming. Interestingly, given present protests against policing culture and methods, there is a strong critical analysis of the police running through the book, written not long after the Rodney King riots; Connelly describing the force as a paramilitary organization infected with political bacteria. Bosch is part of that culture, while he also wages war on the worst of crimes.

Bosch, Rebus and Maxine

It was interesting to read Michael Connelly’s The Black Box and Ian Rankin’s Standing in Another Man’s Grave back to back.  There’s a lot of similarities between the two series.  Both follow the exploits of maverick cops who have analogous characteristics and histories.  Harry Bosch and John Rebus both started out in the army before becoming cops.  Both are laws unto themselves who have their own approaches that bend rules and set them in conflict with their bosses, and both are no strangers to be investigated by internal watchdogs.  They survive because they solve difficult puzzles and get results, and they have been protected by senior cops who have watched their backs.  Their careers trajectories are also similar, with both cops having retired as detectives to be taken back on in cold case units.  In both cases their personal lives are a bit of a mess, each has a daughter with whom they have a difficult relationship, and they are obsessive about music.  Both detectives have featured in eighteen novels, and both authors are published by Orion.  I’ve read 15 of the Bosch books and all of Rebus. 

So what are the differences?  For me, the main differences are that Bosch acts more in a solo capacity, whereas Rebus is anarchic but tries harder to bring his colleagues along with him; the Bosch novels tend more towards thriller-like finales, whereas Rebus cases tend to play out in more understated but equally dramatic ways; and Rankin tends to have more layered and complex stories with nuanced subplots and stronger secondary characters (especially in the latter books in both series).  That said, both are exceptionally strong series, with main characters that have built up loyal followings for good reasons - compelling lead characters, strong sense of place, good contextualisation, and strong plotting.

I’m sure that this would have been a post that Maxine Clarke, an avid crime fiction fan, reviewer of books on her blog Petrona, and curator of the Crime and Mystery Friendfeed, would have commented on.  Connelly and Rankin rated amongst her favourite authors and she always had a perceptive observation to offer.  Sadly, Maxine passed away on Monday morning after a long illness.  She was a great friend of this blog, especially when I first started out, inviting me into the Friendfeed community and introducing me to other crime fiction bloggers.  She will be sadly missed by authors and readers for her constructive critical appraisal and by the community of crime fiction bloggers for whom she was a key catalyst and energetic friend.  A measure of the esteem in which she is held is the number of tributes that have been written in her honour over the past couple of days - links to them all are listed on Margot Kinberg's blog.  I hope she’s comfortably settled in the ‘big library in the sky’.

Review of The Black Box by Michael Connelly (Orion, 2012)

Harry Bosch is a detective with the open-unsolved unit of the LAPD.  Twenty years earlier he’d been a homicide detective investigating suspicious deaths as the 1992 LA riots unfolded.  One such case was the murder of a Danish photojournalist who’d been on vacation in the US and who'd decided to combine business with pleasure; for her trouble she’d been lured into an alley and shot.  When the riots were concluded the case was given to a different division and Bosch lost sight of it.  As the anniversary of the riots approaches the LAPD has decided to take a fresh look at its unsolved murders and Bosch gets another chance to solve the case.  Running the one solid clue he has - a shell casing - through ballistics reveals that the gun used to fire the fatal bullet has subsequently been used in three other murders.  That’s not quite enough to open up the black box to reveal the killer, but it provides an initial trail.  A trail that his bosses don’t seem keen for him to follow. 

As police procedurals go, The Black Box was pretty average (especially compared to some of Connelly’s earlier books in the series).  The focus of the plot is interesting, but it felt a little too linear and straightforward, lacking in subplot (beyond his usual run in with his bosses and internal affairs), layers and twists or turns - Harry unearths all the clues, but doesn’t seem to have to work that hard to locate them.  The ending in particular felt shallow, rushed and lacked credibility in parts, using weak plot devices to create a bloody climax. After 18 outings (I've read 15 of them), Harry seemed somewhat tired and drawn, a shadow of his former self trapped in a cycle of endlessly reliving his modus operandi as a solo, maverick cop who bends rules and annoys his superiors whilst unpicking puzzles lesser men would fail to solve.  For the series to have new life my feeling is the stories are going to need to become more complex, layered and believable, and some of the secondary characters are going to have to come to the fore and there be sustained interaction.  I’m sure there are plenty of Connelly fans out there who will disagree, but whilst The Black Box was entertaining enough way to spend a few hours, Connelly is capable of spinning more gripping and engrossing tales (as evidenced by his back catalogue).

Review of Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly (Orion, 2009)

An elderly Chinese immigrant is gunned down in his liquor store in Downtown LA. Detective Harry Bosch believes it’s a triad hit and zeros in on his quarry. Whilst he’s trying to piece together enough evidence to make the case stick, however, he receives disturbing news from Hong Kong, a triad powerhouse. Having to drop everything, Bosch heads for the Chinese city, determined to resolve what has just become a very personal case.

I’m a Michael Connelly fan. I own a copy of just about all of his books. They are generally superior fare amongst the bestseller lists, but Nine Dragons, I felt, was one of his weaker offerings. The story felt rushed, with prose that was workmanlike and flat. And the plot was weak, feeling like two shorter stories jammed together. The part of the book set in Hong Kong, in particular, seemed to lack life, depth and credibility. There was a particular event that happens that is described as if it had barely any emotional resonance or trauma to Bosch and other characters, and it continues as a notable absence throughout the rest of the book. And from the minute Bosch arrives back from Hong Kong, very little of the plot seems credible. The result is a police procedural/psychological thriller with the psychology bit mostly missing; a Harry Bosch story where Bosch seems like a very pale version of himself. I was a bit disappointed with the last Connelly I read, The Scarecrow, and Nine Dragons makes two in a row that have been below his usual very high standards. In both cases, my sense is the books were rushed. When on top of his game, it’s difficult to beat a good Connelly book, but for me at least, Nine Dragons is well down his greatest hits list.

Review of The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly (Orion, 2009)

Jack McEvoy is a seasoned reporter with the LA Times covering the crime beat.  The newspaper is in financial trouble and is laying off 100 employees.  Jack’s chips are cashed at number 99 and he’s been given two weeks grace to train his replacement, the ambitious rookie, Angela Cook.  Jack is a pro, and if he’s going, he’s going on a high and the inside track on the life of 16 year old Alonzo Winslow, confessor to rape and murder, seems like the perfect front page story.  Only once Jack starts to probe, he comes to the conclusion that Alonzo is innocent.  Which means that someone else raped and killed the woman found in the car Alonzo had stolen.  McEvoy turns to his former partner, and FBI profiler, Rachel Walling for advice, and Cook, eager to muscle in on Jack’s swansong story, discovers a murder with an almost identical modus operandi in Las Vegas, one in which the ex-husband has been convicted.  Unwittingly, through her internet search, Cook has triggered an alarm and unbeknownst to them, the two journalists turn from hunters to hunted.  On a journey into the desert outside of Vegas, Jack has his first encounter with The Scarecrow, and is saved by Walling.  So begins a cat and mouse game with a killer who seems to know their every move.

Connelly is a crime writing heavyweight and thankfully, unlike some mega-sales writers, his books are generally consistently well written, plotted and entertaining.  His writing is deceptively easy on the eye, honed through years of working as a crime journalist, and he draws extensively on his knowledge of the newspaper business, law enforcement and the legal system to provide, for the most part, a confident degree of realism.  His dialogue is credible and his characters are well drawn.  Where The Scarecrow has a weakness is with respect to the plot.  It is all going fine up until the point where Rachel Walling is introduced, a plot device to hook McEvoy back up with his old partner.  Connelly has a penchant for taking the lead characters from his many books and intersecting their lives, with mixed results.  From here on in, the story becomes a little lame and formulaic with McEvoy and Walling throwing commensense and rationality out the window and The Scarecrow turns into a pretty ordinary serial killer who is caught without too much trouble, albeit through a sequence of events that provides some tension.  Over the years, Connelly has set himself a very high tide mark in quality reading.  The Scarecrow is an entertaining read, but it is certainly not his best work and might disappoint some fans.