City Of Bones [Hardcover]

Michael Connelly's world-weary cop Harry Bosch gets another outing in City of Bones, torn apart by having to investigate the long-ago killing of a much abused boy and by his doomed affair with a much younger woman cop. This is not the best or the most ingenious, but is the gloomiest and perhaps most thoughful, of Connelly's thrillers about Bosch, thrillers which take the assumptions of the police procedural and makes them part of the creation of a mood in which to investigate is to struggle with the tragic forces in life. Connelly is especially good on the more positive aspects of canteen culture, that real desire to protect the innocent and serve society that Bosch calls "the blue religion"; when, as here, a paedophile witness is outed to the press or a suspect shot in dubious circumstances, it is not just good standards of policework, but something more important that is being betrayed. If City of Bonesturns out to be the last of Connelly's books about Bosch, or the last in which he is controlled and constrained in his mission of justice by his role as a police officer, it will not be a dying fall to one of the more impressive thriller series of our time. --Roz Kaveney

'A crime writing genius... his Harry Bosch stories are genuine modern classics' - Independent On Sunday --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Give a dog a bone and a whole can of worms opens up. This is the start of the 7th great Detective Harry Bosch novel, set in LA but far from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. When a dog returns to its master with a humerus in its mouth it opens up a horrific case of child abuse from twenty years previously. For the next two weeks Bosch and his partner try to bring closure and after identifying the skeleton the answer seems simple. Too simple... Digging back into the neighbourhood's past unearths secrets that could and do destroy lives and careers, bringing back memories for Bosch that he would rather forget. Award-winning crime writer Michael Connelly carries the plot back and forth, intertwining it with Bosch's bolshiness in the face of authority. Love interest arises only to confound both the case and Bosch with the complexity of its relationship. A page-turning, fast-moving pacy crime story - forget about doing anything else till the last page is turned and Bosch reaches a crossroads in his life. - Lucy Watson

Detective Harry Bosch returns in an outstanding new thriller from this sure-fire bestselling author 'Slick plotting, far-from-gratuitous thrills, a breakneck pace and superb characterisation' Guardian --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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 out 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.

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 Florida and Los Angeles.

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

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

The day more than half over and that duty consisted of two suicide runs – 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. While most people greeted the day with a sense of hope and renewal, there were those who saw it as a good day to die, some – like the old lady – not realising their mistake until it was too late.

Bosch looked up through the windshield and watched as the latest victim’s body, on a wheeled stretcher and covered in a green blanket, was loaded into the coroner’s blue van. He saw there was one other occupied stretcher in the van and knew it was from the first suicide – a thirty-four-year-old actress who had shot herself while parked at a Hollywood overlook on Mulholland Drive. Bosch and the body crew had followed one case to the other.

Bosch’s cell phone chirped and he welcomed the intrusion into his thoughts on small deaths. It was Mankiewicz, the watch sergeant at the 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. Must be a slow day for the media – getting more what’s-happening calls from reporters than I am getting service calls from citizens. They all want to do something on the first one, the actress on Mulholland. You know, a death-of-a-Hollywood-dream story. And they’d probably jump all over this latest call, too."

"Yeah, what is it?"

"A citizen up in Laurel Canyon. On Wonderland. He just called up and said his dog came back from a run in the woods with a bone in its mouth. The guy says it’s human – an arm bone from a kid."

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

"I know what you’re thinking, Harry. Not another bone run. You’ve done 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. And he 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 the traffic. When Mankiewicz came back he was obviously reading.

"The bone’s got a fracture clearly visible just above the medial epicondyle, whatever that is."

Bosch’s jaw tightened. He felt a slight tickle of electric current go down the back of his neck.

"That’s off my notes, I don’t know if I am saying it right. The point is, this doctor says it was just a kid, Harry. So could you humor 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 a patrol team.

"You were right to keep it off the air. Let’s try to keep it that way."

Mankiewicz said he would. Bosch closed his phone and started the car. He glanced over at the entrance to the retirement home before pulling away from the curb. There was nothing about it that looked splendid to him. The woman who had hung herself in the closest of her tiny bedroom had no next of kin, according to the operators of the home. 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.