Michael ConnellyThe Black EchoChristina says:
Harry Bosch, a police detective in Hollywood, one weekend is called to what seems to be a routine case. At first it looks like the man found in a drainpipe at the Mulholland Dam died of a drug overdose. Bosch has some doubts, and when he recognizes the dead man he no longer believes in an accident: it’s Billy Meadows, who served with Bosch in Vietnam as a tunnel expert. Right after Bosch connected Meadows to a spectacular bank robbery that happened a year ago he is called back by the FBI and Internal Affairs. Still he manages to stay on the case. He works together with FBI agent Eleanor Wish. They always have Internal Affairs detectives Lewis and Clarke in tow, who take the investigation against Bosch personally. Wish and Bosch find a street boy named Sharkey who was a witness when Meadows’ body was dumped at the dam. Their investigation uncovers a carefully planned crime that still isn’t over, and Meadows wasn’t the last to die. On top of everything else Bosch has to deal with his memories of Vietnam he had banned to a remote corner of his mind. Connelly wrote a suspense-filled first novel. Especially towards the ending I couldn’t put the book down, when some surprising twists made me revise my opinion thoroughly and many things I found irritating before suddenly made sense in hindsight. First and foremost Agent Wish who seemed to be the token female in an (almost) woman-free-zone. Unfortunately the typical "the hero knows everything and all the others are idiots"-configuration remains. But some of the characters who seemed to be no more than tired stereotypes manage to surprise the reader in the end. Connelly sometimes is given to babbling which makes the narrative drag a bit and lessens the pleasure of reading, for example when he gave lengthy summaries of Bosch’s old cases that weren’t needed for the current plot. Anyway, Connelly is an author I want to read more by. | ||
Copyright 1999 Christina Gross & Monika Hübner |
