Reviews

Back on the job after an involuntary leave of absence, LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch is ready for a challenge. But his first case is a little more than he bargained for.

It starts with the body of a Hollywood producer in the trunk of a Rolls-Royce, shot twice in the head at close range - what looks like "trunk music," a Mafia hit. But the LAPD's organized crime unit is curiously uninterested, and when Harry follows a trail of gambling debts to Las Vegas, the case suddenly becomes more complex - and much more personal.

A rekindled romance with an old girlfriend opens new perspectives on the murder, and he begins to glimpse a shocking triangle of corruption and collusion. Yanked off the case, Harry himself is soon the one being investigated. But only a bullet can stop Harry when he's searching for the truth . . .

Another book where you don't know who dun it until the very end. Love this series

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4.0

One success after another!

A beat officer on routine patrol in a deserted park on Mulholland Drive discovers a body stuffed in the trunk of a parked Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. The crime scene reveals a very professional mobster style execution with two bullets to the back of the head. Subsequent investigation determines the victim is Tony Aliso, a low level but apparently quite wealthy Hollywood executive whose company produces straight to video B movies - little better than soft core skin flicks. In a style that is now very familiar to Michael Connelly's legion of rabid fans, a less than by-the-book investigation by LAPD homicide detective, Harry Bosch, and his new team Kiz Rider, a young black female officer and veteran Jerry Edgar, leads them through a viper's nest of Las Vegas and Chicago mobster connections, dirty cops, Internal Affairs hatchet jobs, FBI cover ups and departmental police bickering.

For the very first time since I began reading the Harry Bosch canon in order, a little niggling voice inside my head was trying to persuade me to not like Trunk Music. "Connelly," I said to myself, ... "This is too much. You've gone to that dirty cop well once too often. You're pushing your luck and this is just going to be repetitious!" Wrong! While the theme might be a little shop worn, Connelly still managed to pull yet another rabbit out of his hat and produce a superb police procedural with twists, turns, red herrings, dead ends and the requisite entirely unpredictable solution as well as allowing Bosch's character to grow at such a pace as to become almost larger than life. His relationship with former FBI Agent and now convicted felon, Eleanor Wish, paints him in warmer, more human colours than we've ever seen before. And in marked contrast to the constant butting of heads with Harvey (98) Pounds, readers will smile at a developing professional relationship with his new boss, Lieutenant Grace Billets.

Highly recommended. Sssh ... listen! That sound you can hear is the patter of running feet as Harry Bosch fans flock to their nearest bookstore to pick up the next one on the Harry Bosch reading list, Angel's Flight".

Paul Weiss