“Bosch didn’t mind the wait. The view was spectacular.”

THERE is quite a large canon of Michael Connelly books these days, thirty one in all, he was first published in 1992 and this one came out in 2016.  I picked it up in a hotel room by chance and finished it in two days. It is one of his best, perhaps comparable to Elmore Leonard. The city of LA is both victim and perpetrator here, the characters becoming manifestations of the place itself. Over this backdrop Harry Bosch lays his detailed, methodical procedural detecto manuals. Bosch in this context is the last vigilante, the sheriff in a lawless city, the gun fight at OK coral updated. “Murder knows no bounds, or city limits”.

He is waiting to meet the man, who knows another man, who has an assignment. Meanwhile a rapist is loose. There is a back story about Vietnam. There is a back story about the time Bosch threw someone through a window. You start to fear for anyone who gets more than a few pages of description, they are highly likely to be implicated. It is fast moving, gripping, intelligent, supreme example of the genre, which is, of course, the Connelly genre. Recommended.