I received my copy of THE BLACK BOX by Michael Connolly yesterday afternoon. I had a lot of things I had to do today. Instead, I started the book and could not do anything else until I finished it.
It opens in 1992. South Central Los Angeles was in the midst of a riot following the not guilty verdicts for four LAPD officers accused of excessively beating a Black man following a car chase. The police department was severely under manned and National Guardsmen are trying to control the mobs.
Harry Bosch was assigned to investigate a homicide in the neighborhood. The victim was Anneke Jespersen, a Danish journalist who had been placed against the wall and shot in the head. There were no witnesses. Bosch was assigned to investigate, but was not given enough time to complete his job because of everything else going on. It bothered him a lot and the case ended up among other unsolved murders.
Twenty years later the department is trying to clear unsolved murders. Since he was involved at the beginning, Harry wanted to work on this case. The lieutenant in charge was focused on reducing the number of cases. In other words, if there’s not an instant resolution, he wanted the staff to move onto other ones. Of course, Bosch was more focused on completing the mission.
By then Police Department had more tools available than it had in 1992. The first evidence he found was a bullet. It turned out it had been used in another unsolved case. Bosch wanted to know its history, where it came from and where else it had been used.
He wanted to know why Jespersen, a white woman, was in the area during the riot. He wanted to find the gun. He wanted to find out where some items she should have had were. And he wanted to find out the motive for her murder.
His search took him in many directions and he had help from several sources, some within the department, and some from outside.
All of Connell’s books have well-developed plots and characters unexpected twists. This is one of his best. I did figure out the motive for the murder partway through seeing how it was resolved kept me going. ( )

Another series I started at the end :) First time I heard about Hyeronimus "Harry" Bosch was when friend of mine said there is a great TV show that I should check out. Needless to say I am still to begin with watching it but what I noticed right away was that this TV show was based on a very successful series of novels.

So I picked up first one I could find, "The Black Box".

This is very slow burning novel. After getting involved in a rush investigation of a murder of news reporter during the LA riots in 1992 Bosch finally gets the chance to solve the case 20 years later when assigned to the cold-case squad.

As I said story is a slow at the beginning but again this is what I would expect from investigation of the old case. Scant evidence collected during the street riots, witnesses no longer alive .... all of this frustrates our protagonist who also needs to fight the internal police bureaucracy intent to send him to retirement as soon as possible. I have to say final twist was a surprise but again causes for so many atrocities are usually very simple and base.

Bosch comes to me like a mix between Lucas Davenport and Jack Reacher. He has that sense of justice and is merciless to killers and criminals (scene where he insists his partner writes down the letter for parole hearings of hard criminals paints a picture of a man who does not trust that sentenced criminals can change or repent in any way). Unlike Davenport though he is not setting the criminals up explicitly but sure managers to manipulate them into position from which they can only surrender or die in a gunfight.

All in all good novel. According to the comments and reviews this one seems to be one of the slower books in the series so this makes me feel very good :) more interesting books to read in the future.

Recommended to fans of the crime and police novels. ( )

I'm definitely a Harry Bosch fan, but this was the worst so far for me. it went nowhere as a story and did not develop any of the characters. ( )

I wasn't a huge fan of the end but I still liked the book. ( )

25th novel is one of his best ( )