When the body of high profile black lawyer Elias Howard is found inside one of the cars on Angels Flight, a funicular in downtown LA, there's not a detective in the city who wants to touch the case. For Howard specialises in lawsuits alleging police brutality, racism and corruption and every LAPD cop is a possible suspect in the killing. Detective Harry Bosch is put in charge.
Howard's murder occurred on the eve of a major trial: on behalf of a black client, Michael Harris, Howard was to bring a civil case against the LAPD for violent interrogation tactics that had caused his client the partial loss of his hearing. Harris had been acquitted of the rape and murder of a twelve-year-old girl, but many, including Bosch, believe him guilty. Howard had let it be known that the trial would serve a dual purpose - to target and bring down the guilty cops and to expose the real murderer of the little girl.
Post Rodney King, the 1992 riots and the trial of OJ Simpson, the City of Angels is living on its nerves. To discover the truth Harry must dig deep in his own backyard - except that it's a minefield of suspicion and hate that could detonate in his face. And as if he didn't have enough on his mind, his happiness with Eleanor Wish looks to be short-lived. Five cards on the felt are pulling her back to a place where Harry cannot follow, back to herself.
Michael Connelly, whose novel
The Poet won the 1997 Anthony Award for Best Mystery, is already recognised as one of the smartest and most vivid scribes of the hard-boiled police procedural. Now, with his much- anticipated sixth Harry Bosch novel,
Angel's Flight, Connelly offers one of the finest pieces of mystery writing to appear in 1998. Bosch is awakened in the middle of the night and, out of rotation, he is assigned to the murder investigation of the high-profile African American attorney Howard Elias. When Bosch arrives at the scene, it seems that almost the entire LAPD is present, including the IAD (the Internal Affairs Division). Elias, who made a career out of suing the police, was sadistically gunned down on the Angels Flight tram just as he was beginning a case that would have struck the core of the department; not surprisingly, L.A.'s men and women in blue become the centre of the investigation. Haunted by the ghost of the L.A. riots, plagued by incessant media attention, and facing turmoil at home, Bosch suddenly finds himself questioning friends and associates while working side by side with some long-time enemies.
Angel's Flight is a detective's nightmare scenario and is disturbingly relevant to the racially tense last decade of the 20th century. Amidst the twists and turns of his complex narrative, Connelly affirms his rightful place among the masters of contemporary mystery fiction. --Patrick O'Kelley, Amazon.com.
