The Black Ice (1993), the second novel in Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series, solidifies the image of Bosch that started to take form in the novel that introduced Bosch to the world a year earlier (The Black Echo). Harry Bosch, at this stage in his life, is a loner, a Vietnam War veteran who still carries the resulting emotional scars, and above all else, an honest cop who will always stand up for the little guy. Even the LAPD brass recognize that Harry Bosch is not someone who will worry about what they think of him. Rather, he will go where his investigatory instincts take him, no matter the risks to his own life or career aspirations.
In The Black Ice, those instincts take him into Mexico - and he’s not coming back to Los Angeles until he is good and ready.
It’s Christmas week, and even though Harry is the on-call detective, his phone doesn’t ring after another detective is discovered dead in a seedy LA motel room. Sensing that someone doesn’t want him to show up at the scene, Harry wastes no time getting there after being alerted to the crime by chatter on his police radio. There he learns that investigators are more than willing to call the cop’s death a suicide, and he is pretty much told to go away and mind his own business.
But when another case that Harry is investigating starts to seem related to the cop’s death, Harry is reminded of a lesson he learned from his first partner when he was a just a rookie detective:
“…facts weren’t the most important part of an investigation, the glue was. He (the partner) said the glue was made of instinct, imagination, and sometimes guesswork and most times just plain luck.”
Harry is not one to count much on luck, but he has an abundance of instinct, imagination, and educated guesswork working in his favor. When, even after another cop is found dead, there are still a lot of people wanting to shut him down, Harry refuses to play their game. Now, if he can just avoid becoming the third dead cop in this case, Harry is going to separate the good guys from the bad guys once and for all.
Bottom Line: The Black Ice is a well written and entertaining mystery, but it is also interesting for other reasons that Harry Bosch fans will appreciate. Along with further solidifying the Harry Bosch image as a crusader-cop, The Black Ice is also the novel in which Bosch learns his father’s identity. He learns, too, that he has a half-brother and three half-sisters when he spots them at their shared father’s funeral. That half-brother will, of course, turn out to be none other than Mickey Haller, who will go on eventually to earn his own Michael Connelly series as “The Lincoln Lawyer.”
Michael Connelly
I read this one back in 2013 and had mostly forgotten it but you've reminded me of why I became such an avid fan of Connelly's in those days.
ReplyDeleteReading the series out of order has been kind of an eye-opener because reading these early books shows me how early Connelly had created some of the characters that became so important later on.
DeleteMy goal is to read more Harry Bosch mysteries this year! He's such a great character. And I love Connelly's writing.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to fully catch up with Connelly; he's fairly prolific and all of his novels are interesting. I love finding Bosch show up in his other series, as well as in the strictly Bosch books. It' The Bosch Universe, for sure, with Connelly. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of Connelly's books I have read. All my Connelly books are stored out in the garage (in different boxes) so I will have to make an effort to find some of them the next time I go through books.
ReplyDeleteBefore reading these first couple of books in the series, I had not realize just how fully formed Harry Bosch was right from the beginning. I like the way that Connelly ages him in real time instead of keeping him young. Of course, that's now becoming an interesting problem for Connelly because Bosch is somewhere in his sixties now and he has to slow down sometime.
DeleteIs Bosch really your favorite? Such an interesting character, a badass right? I think in the show it's his mother he comes to learn about ... though I'm trying to recall.
ReplyDeleteBosch really is my favorite at this point. For a few decades that honor went to James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux, but Bosch has now passed Dave up, I think. Other close contenders are Penny's Gamache, Rankin's Rebus with, I suspect, Cleeves's Vera and Jimmy Perez moving up the list soon.
DeleteHave you seen the Lincoln Lawyer series on Netflix? I haven't read the books, but I really enjoyed the short series. Though, I'm sure there are quite a few differences between book and TV. I think I read that it was based on the 2nd book in the series or something.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen the series, Annie...cancelled Netflix a while back because I grew kind of weary trudging through all their woke-content in search of something to watch. The books are quite good, and I especially like the ones that feature both the Lincoln Lawyer and Bosch. Since they are half-brothers, I find their adult relationship to be an interesting one, especially since they found each other so late in life.
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