Book #262 of 2021:
The Closers by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #11)
After two volumes spent as a private investigator, Harry Bosch has now returned to his roots at the LAPD. (In an afterword, author Michael Connelly explains that his favorite cases are the murders, and it seemed too implausible for a civilian to keep getting caught up in them. I don’t know that that would have been any more outlandish than some of the other developments in this series, though.) Apparently the first-person narration was also a short-lived experiment tied to Harry’s retirement, as we’re back to third-person limited here for whatever reason.
Those larger connections are a little awkward, but luckily, the main plot of this novel is a strong one. The protagonist has been assigned to a division looking into unsolved crimes from decades past, which is a good use of his talents and his well-established drive to find justice for forgotten victims. The first mystery he confronts is a murdered teen who had had a recent abortion no one knew about until it showed up in her autopsy, requiring Bosch and his partner to dig through the old file and reinterview witnesses to try and finally ID the secret boyfriend / presumed killer. I like this type of investigation not only because the cops need to be particularly clever to gain answers so long after the fact, but because their moves bring out countermoves in the suspects that inevitably change the contours of the story as it progresses.
There’s the customary internal politics going on at headquarters too, which is always enjoyable for how it tends to glance off someone like Harry who’s solely focused on the mission at hand. His enemies are the officers who put career interests ahead of their true responsibilities to the community, and that turns him into a valuable tool for a new chief aiming to clean out corruption, bringing the detective up against the sort of colleagues who would have been content to let the cold case stay shelved forever. The ensuing book is a slow and methodical procedural, but it’s a fine example of that genre, and it generally avoids the over-the-top elements that can sometimes drag down this writer’s work.
[Content warning for racism including slurs, homophobia, antisemitism, gun violence, sexual assault, suicide, and mention of incest.]
★★★★☆
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