Description
From Kirkus Reviews Second tense, tightly wound tangle of a case for Hieronymous Bosch (The Black Echo, 1991). This time out, the LAPD homicide cop, who's been exiled to Hollywood Division for his bumptious behavior, sniffs out the bloody trail of the designer drug ``black ice.'' Connelly (who covers crime for the Los Angeles Times) again flexes his knowledge of cop ways--and of cop-novel clich‚s. Cast from the hoary mold of the maverick cop, Bosch pushes his way onto the story's core case--the apparent suicide of a narc--despite warnings by top brass to lay off. Meanwhile, Bosch's boss, a prototypical pencil-pushing bureaucrat hoping to close out a majority of Hollywood's murder cases by New Year's Day, a week hence, assigns the detective a pile of open cases belonging to a useless drunk, Lou Porter. One of the cases, the slaying of an unidentified Hispanic, seems to tie in to the death of the narc, which Bosch begins to read as murder stemming from the narc's dirty involvement in black ice. When Porter is murdered shortly after Bosch speaks to him, and then the detective's love affair with an ambitious pathologist crashes, Bosch decides to head for Mexico, where clues to all three murders point. There, the well-oiled, ten- gear narrative really picks up speed as Bosch duels with corrupt cops; attends the bullfights; breaks into a fly-breeding lab that's the distribution center for Mexico's black-ice kingpin; and takes part in a raid on the kingpin's ranch that concludes with Bosch waving his jacket like a matador's cape at a killer bull on the rampage. But the kingpin escapes, leading to a not wholly unexpected twist--and to a touching assignation with the dead narc's widow. Expertly told, and involving enough--but lacking the sheer artistry and heart-clutching thrills of, say, David Lindsay's comparable Stuart Haydon series (Body of Evidence, etc.). -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Publishers Weekly LAPD detective Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch, protagonist of the highly praised mystery The Black Echo , returns in a procedural thriller set in and around the drug-trafficking underworlds of inner-city Los Angeles and the wastelands of Mexico. When Bosch arrives at a sleazy hotel room where a fellow officer has committed suicide, he senses that something is awry. Noncommittal superior officers, a diffident widow and tales linking the dead man to a newly created street drug called "black ice" (heroin, crack and PCP rolled into one) send Bosch down a winding trail of forensic impossibilities, brutally violent drug traffickers and an ultimately shocking case of mistaken identity. Award-winning Connelly's second fictional effort is strong and sure. His pacing could be better--too often he conveys the same information twice--but his plot and characters more than make up for a slow start. This novel establishes him as a writer with a superior talent for storytelling. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From the Inside Flap The Bookcassette® format is a special recording technique developed as a means of condensing the full, unabridged audio text of a book to record it on fewer tapes. In order to listen to these tapes, you will need a cassette player with balance control to adjust left/right speaker output. Special adaptors to allow these tapes to be played on any cassette player are available through the publisher or some US retail electronics stores. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. GREAT QUOTES FOR THE BLACK ICE: "A terrific yarn, extending the boundaries of the police procedural in the ingenuity of the plot and the creation of character."-Los Angeles Times Book Review "Complex and convincing."-San Diego Union-Tribune "Strong and sure-.This novel establishes Connelly as a writer with superior talent." - Publishers Weekly "Connelly flips the reader's expectations upside down with a surprise ending."-Cleveland Plain Dealer --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From AudioFile Battista's voice makes an ordinary detective novel special. He uses pacing, rather than intonation, to escalate excitement and distinguish characters. D.W.K. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Michael Connelly is a former journalist and author of the bestselling series of Harry Bosch novels and the bestselling novels Chasing the Dime, The Poet, Blood Work, and Void Moon. Connelly has won numerous awards for his journalism and novels, including an Edgar Award. He lives in Florida. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. It should have been his case. But the LAPD brass are all over the crime scene so fast that Detective Harry Bosch scarcely gets a look at the body before the case is taken out of his hands. The corpse in the motel room is identified as that of a narcotics officer who'd been missing for several days. Rumor has it that Internal Affairs had been after him, that he'd crossed over, fronting a new drug called black ice that has infiltrated from Mexico. As the media mount a frenzy of speculation, the police department hastily declares the death a suicide. Bosch isn't so sure. The note - "I found out who I was" - is cryptic at best. The motel room has clearly been wiped clean of all fingerprints except the victim's. And the cop's widow, a strong and lovely woman who blames herself for not knowing her husband better, brings out the idealist in Harry. He starts his own investigation, working without authorization or backup, and it takes him deep into the L.A. night and then across the Mexican border to Mexicali. The dead narc's childhood in the Mexicali barrio is one of many keys Bosch must turn as he plunges into mysteries of identity and enters a game far more complex and lethal than just drug smuggling. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Read more
Features & Highlights
- When an LAPD narcotics officer is found with a fatal bullet wound and a suicide note, Detective Harry Bosch follows a bloody trail of drug murders across the Mexico border.
- Working the case, LAPD detective Harry Bosch is reminded of the primal police rule he learned long ago: Don't look for the facts, but the glue that holds them together. Soon Harry's making some very dangerous connections, starting with a dead cop and leading to a bloody string of murders that wind from Hollywood Boulevard to the back alleys south of the border. Now this battle-scarred veteran will find himself in the center of a complex and deadly game—one in which he may be the next and likeliest victim.
