The Black Echo

This was a great mystery that led you right to the bad guys, then distracted you away, so when you finally discovered “who done it” you were shocked & had them as a suspect. I also really liked that Bosch was somehow both really vulnerable and a complete asshole. (Side Note: It seems like everyone was a jerk by today's standards, just looking at the smoking and littering!) Enjoyed it and just bought the 2nd in the series.

BLUF: Stereotypical detective story.

In hindsight...

I'm not sure if it's funny, or sad, but little more than a month later, I am having problems remembering what I enjoyed about this book.

The Black Echo follows detective Harry Bosch, a former tunnel rat, whose partner is more interested in selling real estate than solving crimes. This doesn't bother Bosch, who is your stereotypical lone cop that doesn't play well with others or follow the rules. Bosch takes a cut and dry overdose and delves into the possibility of murder. For me, it was too far fetched that this detective would have pushed to research a death that was seemingly straightforward, but it plays into his stubborn nature and, as it turns out, the death was not as obvious as it seemed. To make it more interesting, his department has surveillance on him due to his questionable methods and, of course, his blatant disregard for authority.

I have this bad habit of researching a character that I cannot place and turning to Wikipedia or an online blog in order to figure out their role. Well, Wikipedia gave away the ending for me, which greatly took away from the story. Because of this, it was difficult for me to take the relationships as the author intended.

That said, I found this novel intriguing and easy to follow. Bosch is your typical, arrogant detective who is better than everybody else and a hell of a lot smarter. He works through the case, opening more doors than he closes, and ends up discovering the truth, even though it is a surprise to the readers.

While I wouldn't call this novel suspenseful, I was pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns of the story and enjoyed this novel very much. It's the classic detective novel I was looking for and I couldn't put the novel down until I finished it.

Black Echo is a rock solid crime mystery by Michael Connelly. Main character Harry Bosch is somewhat of a renegade detective who seldom does things by the book. Of course this lands him in trouble with his superiors, partners, etc. more often than not contributing to his reputation as a loner; and not a “team” player. But regardless of his unorthodox and undisciplined approach to crime solving, Bosch is a first rate detective with great intuition who always gets his man to see that justice is served. Similarly, Connelly is a first rate author and story teller, who always grabs his readers early on and sees that they are entertained to the end.

The crime mystery in Black Echo is gradually unfolded in bits and pieces and generally keeps the reader guessing with several twists and new revelations throughout the book. The story is further enhanced by Detective Bosch's own Viet Nam experiences including a knowledge of, and personal war relationship with the book's first homicide victim. I rate this book at 3.8 stars and will definitely read more books in the Harry Bosch series. Fans of crime mysteries will not be disappointed by Michael Connelly's Black Echo.

Executive Summary: A few minor problems, but I ended up enjoying this a lot more than expected.

Audiobook: Dick Hill does an excellent job. He does a few voices that really adds that extra something to make the audio book worth it. I was disappointed he only seems to narrate the first few books of the series then it's all over the place. I was ready to continue on in audio. Now once Dick Hill's run has ended, I'll have to decide what I want to do.

Full Review
This book hadn't been on my radar. I was familiar with the character from the Amazon series but I've never watched it. I used to read a lot more mystery and thriller books when I was a teenager, but in my 20s I mostly switched to fantasy and science fiction.

I've tried to return to mystery genre a few times now, but very little has every really ever grabbed me like it used to. Urban Fantasy loves the detective/cop/mystery framing device, so I guess it was easy enough to get that itch scratched.

I ended up getting this from a buy one get one sale and decided to take a chance. It has a few issues with character development. In particular Special Agent Eleanor Wish initially felt more like male wish fulfillment than an actual character. Harry does come off like a bit of a cliche himself. As the book goes one both develop into something more interesting than they first appeared.

I will say the book did do a good job of keeping me guessing and while I figured out some of the details, others caught me completely off-guard. Most mystery books seem to require a high body count, which never really appears to me. I like heist stories and other crimes far more than another who dunnit. Thankfully that seems to be the case here. There are a few bodies throughout, but while Harry is a homicide detective the case goes much deeper.

We'll see how the next few books hold up. I planned to come back eventually, but that looks to have been moved up a bit with the second book coming up on another buy one get one sale. Hopefully I'll enjoy it as much as this one.

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/R3RSYLXNWKBVTB?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

Harry Bosch #1

I came to this after watching the very excellent “Bosch” on Amazon.

It's interesting to note the differences between the television series and the book. First, the series seems to have run the story-lines of the books through a blender so that bits and pieces of this book's story appear in various episodes; for example, the “Sharkey” element from this story appears in season 4 on Amazon. Second, the series has retconned Bosch's age. On TV, he is a Gulf War vet; in the book, he is twenty years out of service in Vietnam. Third, Titus Welliver is a fantastic Bosch, but the book makes Bosch sound like a description of Tom Selleck.

This book stands alone as a mystery/police procedural. It is roughly 1990. Bosch gets a call about a drug user who has died of a “hot shot” whose body is lying in a drainage pipe. Harry notices details that suggest that the man did not die of an overdose. Harry also knows the man as a former comrade from his days of fighting as a “tunnel rat” in Vietnam. Bosch discovers that his comrade's death involved a theft from a bank, and that brings him to the FBI, and that brings him to a partnership with Eleanor Wish (who is Harry's ex-wife from the series.)

Harry is not a team player. He is at odds with the Internal Affairs department of the Los Angeles Police Department, who have two detectives - Lewis and Clark - watching his moves. He is also at odds with Wish's supervisor, Rourke, who wants to have him kicked from the investigation, but relents when Harry blackmails him into backing off.

The story moves along with plots and counterplots. The ending had me guessing. I thought the writing and plotting were first rate. Bosch is an interesting character, albeit very acerbic. He comes across, at lest in this novel, as a kind of Sam Spade character. The ending reminded me of the ending of The Maltese Falcon - romance be damned, someone's got to answer.

One final aspect of the story that amused me was its late '80s setting, i.e., the world before cell phones. The characters are constantly having to find a pay phone to make their reports. Obviously, these reports are essential for moving the plot along, so that we readers are kept abreast of developments. One thing the advent of cell phones did was eliminate the need of mystery writers to find a way to neatly get their characters to a cell phone without unduly stopping the action.

PSB

Here is my review from my blog; not for promotion, but to inform that this pasted blog is not plagiarized, as Amazon apparently thought one of my pasted reviews was, on their store's site:

This 1992 debut novel of Michael Connelly, and of his classic police detective character, Harry (Hieronymus) Bosch, is nothing short of genius. Harry is a rebel in every way, but his motives are good. We know that the road to hell can be paved with good intentions, and Harry reflects at one point that he thinks his heart is hardened, but his actions are those of a man who has made mistakes, hates falsehood, and takes good turns frequently, no matter the cost to himself.

His partner in “crime”, Eleanor Wish, is somewhat of a kindred spirit, and she works with him from her FBI perch. The crime is a bank caper, but the details are far grittier and complex than the word, “caper” usually evokes in me. Vietnam, street hustlers and tunnel digging figure strongly, and the 508 page paperback edition I read was a slow burn that turned into a page turner halfway through and a raging fire at the end.

Peripheral characters include a pair not unlike Shakespeare's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern if not seemingly anti-semitic, an IAD higher-up who seems like a stooge, and some allied to Bosch, often risking their careers to aid the trusty detective. These characters alternatingly provide dark comic relief, realistic scientific aspects and fraternal help. The supporting cast lend to the plot machinations and contrast that added to my enjoyment.

I was at a family member's home a few years ago and got my pick of several paper shopping bags of books that the person was getting rid of. She said that I could take any and all items wanted, with one stipulation: If I was to dispose of any, I had to sell or donate them; I was not to throw them out. This caveat was not difficult for the son of a book-buyer/librarian, but I am finicky or hesitant, and I only took two volumes of maybe two dozen.

One volume was The Last Mile, by David Baldacci, my Star Wars-like introduction to the great Amos Decker character, the second in the series, thus the Star Wars reference. The other was a book by Michael Connelly about Harry Bosch. I started with the Connelly book, but could not get into it, feeling it was “monochromatic”, with little coloring, no variety.

I then delved into The Last Mile, by Baldacci, and was immediately pleased to identify with the pathos, struggles, successes, and later, even wry humor, of the characters. There was no romance, but there was some chemistry with the primary female character, and the story won for me, hitting on all cylinders.

A couple of years later, my Mom loaned me a book by ‘Connelly, The Black Echo, a paperback from Grand Central, an imprint of Baldacci's firm, Hachette Book Group; a behemoth publisher. She mentioned its story about the detective and his mother, but later I learned she was referencing a different Bosch story.

I kept The Black Echo in the console of my car. Much like my reading glasses, I like to keep accompanying books everywhere I may be: A book in the car, an audiobook in that vehicle's CD player, something on our coffee table, dozens in our office that I like to think of as the library, some on my phone that I'm writing, and more.

When I was parked somewhere waiting, I'd read the book, but only got a little ways in. It seemed like the other ‘Connelly book I'd tried: a little singular in style, no variety. Much later, having exhausted other best reading options and wanting to find something new, I decided to give The Black Echo another try.

This time, I really got into it, and it was highly original and intriguing. There is some lurid content, but I didn't find that the author was tempting me, rather being factual and realistic. There is a lot of bad language, but not to a degree that I felt the writer either wanted to offend or was unable to tell the story without expletives. I had entered a dark tunnel, but while scary and forbidding, I wanted to get to the other side, and see the picture.

My strong feeling is that I was well rewarded. The Bible says that we can't hop the fence into Heaven, but must go through the strait gate and not slip around it. I'm not sure what path the fictional Harry Bosch, with his anger towards evangelists and people in authority is on, but I hope it has a good end. In this book, the character is one I very much admire, plunging into the darkness of humanity, in search of justice for those hurt by the caper.