Lost Light (Harry Bosch, 9) - Hardcover

Michael Connelly

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316154601 ISBN 13: 9780316154604

Publisher: Little Brown, 2003

Synopsis

Only the money was real. Four years ago, LAPD detective Harry Bosch was on a movie set asking questions about the murder of a young production assistant when an armored car arrived with two million dollars cash for use in a heist scene. In a life-imitates-art firestorm, a gang of masked men converged on the delivery and robbed the armored car with guns blazing. Bosch got off a shot that struck one of the robbers as their van sped away, but the money was never recovered. And the young woman's murder was in the stack of unsolved-case files Bosch carried home the night he left the LAPD.
Now Bosch moves full bore back into that case, determined to find justice for the young woman. Without a badge to open doors and strike fear into the guilty, he learns afresh how brutally indifferent the world can be. But something draws him on, past humiliation and harassment. It's not just that the dead woman had no discernible link to the robbery. Nor is it his sympathy for the cops who took over the case, one of them killed on duty and the other paralyzed by a bullet in the same attack. With every conversation and every thread of evidence, Bosch senses a larger presence, an organization bigger than the movie studios and more ruthless than even the LAPD. The part of Bosch that will never back down finds as fatal an opponent as he's ever encountered - and there's no guarantee that Bosch will survive the showdown ahead.

About this title

Review

Michael Connolly has written seven books featuring the hard-boiled Vietnam vet-turned-LAPD detective Harry Bosch and Lost Light sees him ride again. The astringent and vivid realisation of the city of Los Angeles (quite as sharply done as in the great novels of Raymond Chandler) and the layers of complexity created for Bosch made him one of the most interesting and well-realised characters in modern crime fiction. Even the overused device of alcohol abuse in the detective was treated with freshness and imagination. Such non-Bosch titles as Chasing the Dime have their virtues, but most admirers will frankly be relieved that Harry is back in action.

When Harry Bosch left the LAPD, he took with him a murder file about a film production assistant killed four years before during a large-scale robbery on a movie set. The LAPD has decided that the stolen money was utilised to create a terrorist training camp, and there are moves to release the killer to enable the FBI to track down the terrorists. Needless to say, this does not go down well with the volatile Harry, and he soon finds himself up against his erstwhile colleagues at the LAPD and the implacable forces of the FBI.

In the earlier Bosch novels, it's clear that the flintily wrought characterisation and gritty scene-setting concealed some less-than-original plots, but here we've got a triumphant marriage of innovative, hard-edge narrative and a parade of characters quite as vivid as any in the genre. The set pieces have all the usual panache, and the larger and more detailed canvas is carried off with considerable dash. --Barry Forshaw

Review

Taut, pacy and with an agreeably dark atmosphere, this is a welcome return for the grizzled but all-to-human Harry Bosch. -- GOOD BOOK GUIDE

[An] enthralling and labyrinthine crime novel. -- The Sunday Times

Edition details

• Publisher: Little Brown
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316154601
• ISBN 13: 9780316154604
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400