Most authors of mystery and suspense fiction have long since learned that their only hope to make a living from their craft is to launch a new detective series. The field abounds with them, some numbering in the dozens of novels. Believe it or not, the Remo Williams series of thrillers by Warren...
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Michael Connelly’s hero-cop, Harry Bosch, wends his way through a deeply personal crisis in this fast-moving story about human trafficking and murder. The tale speeds at a blistering pace from Los Angeles to Hong Kong and back. In pursuing his suspect in the murder of a South Los Angeles...
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Michael Connelly introduced LAPD Detective Harry Bosch with the publication in 1992 of The Black Echo. Now, two dozen novels later, Harry is retired from the police force and nearing seventy. With the writing on that wall as clear as it could be, Connelly debuted the much younger Detective Renee...
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Every major city has been the setting for numerous mysteries and thrillers. Amazon lists more than 10,000 for New York, 8,000 for Chicago, and 3,000 for Los Angeles. But there’s nothing mysterious about this. Crime is more visible, if not more common on a per capita basis, in cities. And the...
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In 2017, Michael Connelly introduced a tough new lead character in The Late Show. Renee Ballard is a 30-something LAPD detective who had been forced out of the elite Robbery-Homicide division when she complained about sexual harassment by a superior officer. She’s now on the night shift...
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Harry Bosch can’t catch a break. He was forced into retirement from the LAPD, where he served for more than forty years. His wife was murdered. Now his integrity is being called into question when a three-decade-old case is reopened by the LAPD. Meanwhile, as a volunteer detective for...
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Of the thirty-one novels Michael Connelly has written to date since 1992, twenty-two feature LAPD detective Harry Bosch. If you’ve only read one or more of the most recent entries in the series, you may be interested to know that from his first appearance in fiction, Bosch’s...
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In The Wrong Side of Goodbye, former LAPD detective Harry Bosch is hired as a private eye to find out whether a reclusive billionaire has an heir related to him by blood. Now well into his 80s, the man had left behind a pregnant underage Mexican girl “on the wrong side of goodbye” when...
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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes Among contemporary American crime novelists Michael Connelly stands out for the consistent excellence of his long-running series of police procedurals featuring detective Harry Bosch. His novels about Bosch’s half-brother, Mickey Haller, the “Lincoln Lawyer,”...
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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes Welcome to Los Angeles, and be sure to pronounce that name correctly, the Spanish way more and more people do in the increasingly diverse Southland of California. In Harry Bosch’s world, as in reality today, perps, victims, and cops alike are increasingly...
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A review of The Black Box, by Michael Connelly. @@@@ (4 out of 5). LAPD detective Harry Bosch jumps at the chance to take a crack at the unsolved murder of Anneke Jesperson, a Danish war correspondent who mysteriously died of a gunshot during the Rodney King riots in South Central L.A.
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A review of The Drop, by Michael Connelly. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). LAPD detective Harry Bosch is assigned an especially difficult case involving apparently botched DNA analysis and a twenty-year-old rape and murder. No sooner has he begun digging into the mystifying circumstances of the DNA specimen than the Chief’s office insists he take on a high-profile new case: a City Councilman’s son has apparently committed suicide.
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Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review,
with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review,
with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.