Echo Park (Harry Bosch, Book 12)

From Publishers Weekly No matter how much critics and readers love him, Connelly's Harry Bosch is definitely a downer. To catch the spirit of the popular series without sending listeners leaping out of their windows requires an unusually talented reader, who can take the tiny shreds of light the author sprinkles very sparingly through his dark and bloody outings and turn them into veritable bonfires. Fortunately, Cariou is a veteran of four previous Bosch audios who knows his man down to his obsessive socks. Cariou can also do Connelly's normal, only semidepressed supporting characters with grace and depth: Harry's female partner, other cops with mixed motives, crooked lawyers, on-the-make politicians, even a convicted serial killer trying to escape the death penalty by reopening one of Bosch's old wounds. Cariou, of course, can't remove Harry's guilt or ease his obsessions: he's an actor, not a therapist. But his talent adds a Prozac-like sense of ease not to be taken lightly. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the audioCD edition. From Booklist Harry Bosch is still on the job, working out of LAPD's Open Unsolved Unit, and despite his best efforts at holding his antiestablishment impulses in check, he's in trouble again. This time the problem is an unsolved case that has haunted Harry since 1993. Now it appears that the killer has been caught, apprehended by chance and connected to a string of nine additional murders. As cops and prosecutors debate a plea bargain--the killer will confess to the murders if he can avoid the death penalty--it is revealed that Harry and his partner may have missed a crucial clue back in 1993 that could have solved the case then and prevented the later murders. But something doesn't feel right. As in The Closers (2005), Harry once again may be the victim of a politically inspired conspiracy, or "high jingo" in cop talk. Connelly remains a master at constructing plots that, like contrapuntal themes in music, echo one another. As we watch Harry confront the train wreck that could destroy his career, we also see him dealing with a potentially even more serious crisis being played out internally: Can he recover from the knowledge that his oversight may have resulted in nine murders? Is he a good cop with no tolerance for phonies, or is he, in fact, as his enemies have always argued, an uncontrollable rogue whose hubris costs lives? The answers to these questions are not as clear cut as one might assume, with Connelly forcing Harry's many fans to accept the harsh truth that the genre's most compelling hero may also be one of its most flawed. Superior crime fiction, as suspenseful as it is psychologically acute. Bill Ott Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the audioCD edition. "Terrific...superbly plotted...Connelly gets everything right."― New York Times Book Review "A suspenseful, fast-paced Bosch page-turner."― Associated Press "Delivers all the punch of a compelling, suspenseful thriller."― People magazine --This text refers to the audioCD edition. From The Washington Post In his 11 Harry Bosch novels, Michael Connelly has bucked two pervasive trends in modern crime fiction. Too many writers have fallen into the trap of writing quirky detectives who detour into cutesy or hard-boiled stories that devolve into violent, ironic self-parody. But Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch of the Los Angeles Police Department is serious and straightforward, and Connelly's latest, the knowing, taut and suspenseful Echo Park, proves that Harry's creator is as well. Since making his first appearance in 1992's The Black Echo as a 42-year-old, Bosch has aged in real time. Now, nearing 60, Bosch is back with the LAPD, working in the Open-Unsolved Unit, going over cold cases with his most recent partner, Kiz Rider. Most of the cops on the unit, including Rider, are from a different generation. Harry may have backup, but emotionally and mentally he's alone. A serendipitous traffic stop in L.A.'s Echo Park neighborhood nabs Reynard Waits, a man with body parts in his front seat. Soon Waits has confessed to a string of slayings involving prostitutes and runaways, as well as to two earlier murders: one of a pawnshop owner during the 1992 riots, the other of a young equestrian named Marie Gesto, whose car and clothing turned up in a garage but whose body was never found. Bosch had worked the Gesto case and had in years since reopened the files on occasion, but had come up empty. He had even pegged a likely culprit -- the son of a wealthy and powerful industrialist -- so Waits's confession and knowledge of the body's location throw him for a loop. But Bosch is shaken more deeply when the case files are reexamined and it seems that Waits had called the police shortly after the murder, pretending to be a tipster; he could have been implicated within a week of Gesto's disappearance. "Bosch considered himself a true detective, one who took it all inside and cared," writes Connelly. "Everybody counts or nobody counts. . . . It made him good at the job but it also made him vulnerable. The mistakes could get to him and this one was the worst of all mistakes." He could have prevented nine murders, and that knowledge leaves Bosch ready to crack. Connelly, a former crime reporter, knows both the squad-room and the newsroom, and once again he assembles a formidable group of adversaries for Bosch: the LAPD brass, the L.A. Times city desk and a powerful, well-connected lawyer who sees the Gesto case as the key to the district attorney's office. Connelly is still a master of the economical scene. His action never devolves into cheap suspense or sentimentality but moves along at an unforced clip. Several people from Bosch's past -- most notably his friend and former lover, FBI profiler Rachel Walling -- also make appearances in Echo Park, and their relationships with the aging detective are well sketched. What puts Connelly in the top rank of modern procedural writers -- and, perhaps, into the ranks of the better modern L.A. writers of any genre -- is his willingness to accept that there aren't always easy answers in Bosch's life, or sometimes any answers at all. (Indeed, the future of more than one major character in the series is left in question at Echo Park's end.) That sense of uncertainty and dread, combined with Bosch's going from middle age to the precipice of old age, informs every page of this novel. Connelly is one of the few crime writers who could conceivably kill off his hero and make it an organic, even inevitable, literary development. And like his namesake, the original Hieronymus Bosch, Det. Harry Bosch is groping his way through a violent and often surreal netherworld, with no guarantee that he'll be coming out the other side. Echo Park is simple, straightforward writing that plumbs beneath the deceptive surface of a deceptively surfacey city, and Connelly's chronicles of Bosch -- like the detective himself -- are aging like a fine Scotch. Reviewed by Kevin Allman Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the audioCD edition. From AudioFile LAPD Detective Bosch confronts inner demons, childhood memories, police corruption, and a serial killer who may be connected to a cold case that has haunted him for thirteen years. Bosch's knowledge of the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles is key to finding the killer. Len Cariou's pitch- perfect performance is understated yet expressive. His tone, pacing, and characterization capture the inner turmoil of the detective and the grittiness of the corrupt environment in which he operates. The abridgment never seems choppy or incomplete. And those new to the series will be drawn in without missing a beat. Connelly writes a compelling story with a strong sense of place, and Cariou delivers it with style. E.S. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the audioCD edition. Michael Connelly is a former journalist and has won every major prize for crime fiction. He lives in Florida. --This text refers to the audioCD edition. From Bookmarks Magazine Harry Bosch has been around since the Edgar Award?winning The Black Echo (1992), and critics agree that neither he nor the police-procedural series has lost of any of their original luster. Instead, they're both getting better with age. As in previous installments, both character and plot drive Echo Park : Harry's passion for the case and his guilt at having not found the killer before more murders occurred create a flawed, convincing hero. Michael Connelly's sharp eye for Los Angeles, from Sunset Boulevard to Beachwood Canyon and Echo Park, also kept critics turning the pages. Overall, Echo Park "is a richly imagined and finely crafted piece that grabs the reader on Page One and locks him but a half-step behind Bosch on every page that follows" ( Denver Post ). Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the audioCD edition. Read more