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weaselweader 's review for:
Echo Park
by Michael Connelly
Hard driving, gutsy police procedural!
Harry Bosch is a detective working for LAPD's Open Unsolved Unit. Marie Gesto's 1996 disappearance, a case to which Bosch was assigned when he was in Homicide, was never solved. Her clothes were found neatly folded on the front seat of an abandoned car parked in the garage of a vacant luxury apartment but her body was never recovered and the case has eaten at Bosch ever since. Thirteen years later, Raynard Waits was pulled over in his van in the early morning hours in Echo Park but the traffic stop turned out to be far from routine. The officers discovered two trash bags in the van that contained the dismembered body parts of two women. In an effort to avoid the death penalty, Waits and his lawyer, Maurice Swann, negotiate a deal with the prosecuting attorney, Rick O'Shea, in which Waits confesses to nine murders including Marie Gesto's and promises to lead the police to the location of her long buried body.
But every good detective knows that the devil is in the details and there are a few things about Waits' story and the structure of the deal that just don't ring true for Bosch. So despite all evidence to the contrary, Bosch persists in the investigation, gets in a lot of faces and takes us on an amazing roller coaster ride to the astonishing solution that has avoided his grasp for so many years.
Echo Park is a brilliant piece of literary craftsmanship that isn't so much thriller as hard-core, rock solid police procedural - gritty, sweaty, dynamic, realistic, fast-paced, exciting, political and filled to the brim with a wealth of informative detail. But, make no mistake about it, the plot is still a hard-driving page turner and doesn't let up for a single page from start to finish. An old acquaintance and working colleague, FBI agent Rachel Walling, provides Bosch with expertise in psychological profiling and fleshes out Connelly's story with a romantic twist that ends in a much more down to earth fashion than we've come to expect from more run-of-the-mill novels.
Congratulations to Michael Connelly! He seems to be moving from strength to strength. The Lincoln Lawyer was outstanding, Echo Park was superb and there's certainly no indication that his momentum is flagging!
Paul Weiss
Harry Bosch is a detective working for LAPD's Open Unsolved Unit. Marie Gesto's 1996 disappearance, a case to which Bosch was assigned when he was in Homicide, was never solved. Her clothes were found neatly folded on the front seat of an abandoned car parked in the garage of a vacant luxury apartment but her body was never recovered and the case has eaten at Bosch ever since. Thirteen years later, Raynard Waits was pulled over in his van in the early morning hours in Echo Park but the traffic stop turned out to be far from routine. The officers discovered two trash bags in the van that contained the dismembered body parts of two women. In an effort to avoid the death penalty, Waits and his lawyer, Maurice Swann, negotiate a deal with the prosecuting attorney, Rick O'Shea, in which Waits confesses to nine murders including Marie Gesto's and promises to lead the police to the location of her long buried body.
But every good detective knows that the devil is in the details and there are a few things about Waits' story and the structure of the deal that just don't ring true for Bosch. So despite all evidence to the contrary, Bosch persists in the investigation, gets in a lot of faces and takes us on an amazing roller coaster ride to the astonishing solution that has avoided his grasp for so many years.
Echo Park is a brilliant piece of literary craftsmanship that isn't so much thriller as hard-core, rock solid police procedural - gritty, sweaty, dynamic, realistic, fast-paced, exciting, political and filled to the brim with a wealth of informative detail. But, make no mistake about it, the plot is still a hard-driving page turner and doesn't let up for a single page from start to finish. An old acquaintance and working colleague, FBI agent Rachel Walling, provides Bosch with expertise in psychological profiling and fleshes out Connelly's story with a romantic twist that ends in a much more down to earth fashion than we've come to expect from more run-of-the-mill novels.
Congratulations to Michael Connelly! He seems to be moving from strength to strength. The Lincoln Lawyer was outstanding, Echo Park was superb and there's certainly no indication that his momentum is flagging!
Paul Weiss