The Black Echo - Michael Connelly

I didn’t plan it this way, but I do find it rather appropriate that my first book review of the new year is of the book that introduced one of the most popular fictional detectives in recent memory to the world. The Black Echo, published in 1992, was the first of Michael Connelly’s “Bosch novels.” Now, depending on how you count them - and it does get a little bit tricky - there are at least 26 novels featuring Harry Bosch. Most recently, Bosch has been teamed up with a new, younger partner called Renée Ballard, but beginning in 2008, Bosch has also been paired with his famous half-brother in four of the “Lincoln Lawyer” novels. In fact, just this morning I stopped by a Target store to purchase a copy of last November’s The Law of Innocence, the latest Lincoln Lawyer novel in which the brothers join forces. 

Interestingly, Hieronymous Bosch is already forty years old when readers first meet him. Harry even lives alone in the same stilted-house in Los Angeles that readers have come to know so well over the last almost-thirty years. But most tellingly, he is already in trouble with his police superiors, a state of being that will become the norm for Harry in many, if not most, of the next two-dozen books. Too, many of the characters that will become mainstays in later books are first introduced - although not always in a positive way - in The Black Echo. 

It is in this first book that readers learn enough of his backstory to understand why Harry is so ready to fight the system and why he is such a loner and a rebel. The experiences that Bosch had as a tunnel rat during the war in Vietnam play a crucial role in The Black Echo, but readers also learn enough here about the detective’s mother and his boyhood to understand why he still carries such deep emotional scars.

The Black Echo begins when Bosch gets called to work a possible crime scene at Lake Hollywood where a dead body has been discovered inside a large drainage pipe. It is likely that the dead body belongs to an addict who has suffered an overdose, but cause of death will need to be determined before that can be confirmed. After Bosch has had time to study the scene and the body for a few minutes, he realizes two things: the death is probably not accidental and he knows the victim, a fellow Vietnam War tunnel rat - someone Harry  helped into rehab a couple of years earlier but had not spoken with since. 

That’s when things start to get complicated and Harry begins to realize that there is more to this case than some very powerful people want to see exposed. Harry Bosch, though, is not a man who can easily be stopped from carrying an investigation through, no matter where that investigation may lead him or who tries to shut him up. He continues working the case, picking and choosing what information he will share with others involved in the investigation, despite the two Internal Affairs cops who trail him all the while in hopes that they can finally claim his badge as a trophy. Harry is just not a real popular guy with the LAPD or the FBI.

Bottom Line: The Black Echo is an excellent introduction to Harry Bosch and the Los Angeles police department environment he must survive if he wants to do his job. I can tell you from experience that you do not necessarily have to read this first book in the series before jumping into the series at some later point, but it will certainly help you understand the character if you do. This is particularly true for the Vietnam-based portion of Bosch’s backstory. The Black Echo is an impressive debut novel. Even more impressive is the way that Michael Connelly has lived up to all the promise shown in the novel. 

Michael Connelly book photo

True Crime for 2021

I make no secret of how big a fan I am of books published by The Library of America. The books are always of the highest quality, and especially considering the uniqueness of their compilations, they are always interesting in addition to being a bargain. So what better way to begin a new year than to highlight one of the last two LOA books I purchased in 2020, True Crime: An American Anthology.

Like a lot of people, I've been fascinated by true crime books for a long time. For me, it probably started way back with the publication of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, but I always thought of the genre as being something that only grew popular  around the time of that groundbreaking book. Obviously, I've been very wrong about that assumption.

This compilation is almost 800 pages long, and it includes the "true crime" writing of authors like Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Nathanial Hawthorne, Abraham Lincoln, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Damon Runyon, H.L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser, Edna Ferber, and James Thurber. Others included in the anthology are not so surprising, names like: Jack Webb, Dominick Dunne, Ann Rule, James Ellroy, Gay Talese, and Capote himself.

This one arrived in December, so I'm looking forward to dipping in and out of it a good bit during 2021. Most people, I think, believe that the Library of America only publishes the classics that established the publisher's reputation. That is far from the case because Library of America books include collections of science fiction classics, war reporting, baseball and other sports writing, classic detective fiction, etc. I add ten or twelve of their books to my shelves every year and now have 114 of them. If you don't know this publisher, do take a look at their catalog because I think they will surprise you.

2020 by the Numbers

As happy as I am to put 2020 behind us, I'm not really expecting the first half of 2021 to be very different. The good news, I suppose, is that there does finally seem to be good reason to hope that things will slowly return to at least near-normal over the next few months. I'm pleased to be able to say that Book Chase is rapidly approaching its fourteenth anniversary (January 20), and that I'm enjoying book-blogging as much, if not more, than ever. 

But now, it's time for my annual crunching of the numbers - and being a former accountant in the real world, this is one of my favorite posts of the whole year. I enjoy comparing my tabulations to those of past years just to see how my reading has evolved over the years. This is what the numbers look like for 2020:

Number of Books Read - 120 

Fiction - 97:   

• Novels - 85   
• Short Story Collections - 6  
• Plays - 2
• Novellas - 4

 

Nonfiction - 23:

• Memoirs - 6
• Biographies - 3 
• Sports - 2
• True Crime- 1
• History - 3
• Science - 2
• Sociology - 3
• Politics -  2
• Travel -  1

Total books are down 12 from 2019 with the difference coming from a drop in nonfiction titles from 45 to 23. Fiction titles are up 10 books from 2019.

• Written by Men - 67
• Written by Women - 50
• Written by Both - 3

2019's men to women ratio was 84-45 as compared to this year's 67-50 ratio. I think this is the first year that the gender ratio has fallen much below 2-1 in favor of male authors.

• Audiobooks - 23
• E-Books - 44
• Library Books - 64
• Review Copies - 38
• From My Shelves - 18

• Pages per Day: 103
• Total Pages Read: 37,600

The source-mix of my books changed a bit from 2019 to compensate for all the 2020 pandemic restrictions: 11 fewer audiobooks, 22 more e-books (twice as many as 2019), 28 fewer library books, 9 more review copies, and 7 more from my own shelves. Surprisingly, I read 6,000 fewer pages this year, probably because I went through a period of several long weeks during which I found it almost impossible to concentrate on reading. I was starting to think the problem was never going to go away until very suddenly...it did.

My goals coming into the year were simple ones: read more in translation, more from my own shelves, more literary classics, more from the years 1920-1979, and catch up on a few of the detective series I follow. Let's just say I did better on some of the goals than on others:

• 9 translated works
• 18 from my own shelves
• 2 literary classics
• 10 from 1920-1979
• 14 early books from my favorite series

I was a little surprised to learn how heavily I depend on newish books for my reading material. Fifty of the books I read in 2020 were published in 2020, another five will be published in 2021, and twenty were published in 2019. Numbers like that make me wonder if I'll ever figure out what I missed during those years I was way too busy caught up in living life and raising a family to read more than twenty or thirty books a year. I suppose I'll never know unless I finally find enough willpower to better resist all the bright and shiny new objects that keep getting dangled before my eyes. 

All in all, I feel blessed to be a committed reader because I think 2020 would surely have been a lot tougher than it was if I had had to depend on television to amuse me. 

The Book Chase January 2021 Reading Plan

Well, here we go...ready or not 2021 is here. I'm looking forward to a fresh start despite the overwhelming possibility that at least the first six months of 2021will simply be Episode 2 in the Pandemic Unleashed mini-series we are living in right now. So in the spirit of making the most of a fresh start, this is what my January reading plan is shaping up to be:

This 20th book in the series featuring Chicago female detective V.I. Warshawski was published early in 2019. I read most of the early books as they were published in the eighties and nineties, but I put them aside in the mid-nineties and have read only one of them since - and that was in 2009. I suspect that I will not remember much about V.I. and that reading this one will be much like starting the series all over again. I remember really liking her, though, and I'm curious to see how it goes. 

The Black Echo (1992) is the very first Harry Bosch novel. It's a book I've been trying to get my hands on for several weeks now because, despite being very familiar with the character and the chronology of the series, I've never read the first one. I actually started it yesterday morning and was surprised to learn that Harry was already 40 years old in this first book and that he was already living in what has become his iconic house - and he was already in trouble with the brass. The "black echo" in the title references the enemy underground tunnels that Bosch helped clear during the war in Vietnam.

This is one I read about in the New York Times Book Review, but I'm not sure what to think of it now that I have a library copy. It's about a woman who comes "home" for the first time in twelve years and finds that her best friend's children - who were 3 and 5 years old when she left - do not seem to have aged a single day in her absence. They are still the "perfect little children" she last saw. This one is going to have to work hard to make me suspend my feeling of disbelief - and that is never an easy thing for an author to do to me. We'll see. 

The truth about this one is that until about a week ago I had heard neither of the novel or its author. Then I spotted a four-episode miniseries by the same title on the PBS app I subscribe to. I was intrigued enough by the first episode to see if my library had a copy - and three days later I had it home with me. The series credits say that the episodes are "based on" the book by Louise Doughty, but it does not appear that the author had anything to do with writing the screenplay. I've watched the whole thing now, and I especially love the way it ended. I was on the edge of my seat for the last few minutes, and I can't wait to see how much of this came from the book and how much was changed. 

Starting with Joshilyn Jackson's Gods in Alabama, I've had good luck with this author's novels. Mother May I is an advance reader's edition I have of her new novel that will be published in April 2021. The premise is that when a baby boy goes missing his mother jumps in with both feet asking questions and exposing secrets that place both her and her son in deadly danger. "How far will a mother go to protect her child?" Honestly, I don't think I would be reading this one if it were not written by an author whose work I've enjoyed so much in the past. 

Laurie Frankel's One Two Three is also a review copy, this one to be published on June 8, 2021. I'm planning to read it soon, but I'll probably hold the review until closer to the book's publication. I was drawn to this one by the way its cover so perfectly reflects the books plot. One Two Three is about a set of triplet sisters, all very different from each other, who live in a little town whose water supply was declared "unfit for use" around the time of their birth. Now, the girls are digging for the answers their mother has never been able to uncover.

This is the third book in a thriller series featuring Ridley Fox and Nita Parris. I am unfamiliar with the characters or the author, but I want to learn more about each. This one was written in June 2014, but I'm reading a review copy. The hook goes like this: "Crack the code and you'll save millions of lives. But knowing it exists will get you killed." Not to worry though...CIA agents Fox and Parris are on the case.

I started reading Dark Passage a few days ago from this Library of America collection of Charles Goodis noir novels of the 1940s and 1950s. I've had to put it aside for a while, so I'll be reading the final two-thirds of the novel in January. I only put it aside because other deadlines ate up my reading time, so I'm looking forward to getting back to the story. Can't wait to see how it all turns out, and now I wish I could find someone broadcasting the movie version.

I suspect that, as usual, some choices will change because I'm expecting several books to be ready for curbside pick-up at my local library in the next 2-3 weeks. Among the possibilities are: Battle of Brothers (Robert Lacey), The Midnight Library (Matt Haig), I'll Be Seeing You (Elizabeth Berg), and The Queen's Gambit (Tevis Walter). Too, I'm still in the process of lining up new books for review during the first quarter.  But I think this is a good start to the year.

Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism - Sharyl Attkisson

Never have I worked harder to keep myself informed as to what is happening in this country and around the world. And never in my adult life have I been so misinformed about what is happening in this country and the rest of the world. I know whose fault that is - and it is not mine. 

Sharyl Attkisson’s Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism does an admirable job of explaining the problem. What she has to say in Slanted will horrify any reader who is concerned about the future of this country, but the scariest thing about the current state of journalism in this country and the rest of the world is that it has been so bad for so long that a whole generation of young adults now considers it all to be normal. But, of course, the first thing that readers need to know about the book is exactly who its author is. Is Sharyl Attkisson an honest broker of the book’s message or does she have an axe of her own to grind? 

So, let’s begin with Attkisson’s background. She is a veteran news reporter who has won five Emmy Awards and an Edward R. Murrow Award for her investigative reporting at networks like CNN, CBS, and PBS. She is an old-school journalist who believes in following the truth no matter where it leads her or whom it embarrasses. She most definitely does not believe, and never has, in mixing her personal opinions into the news she reports. And that’s why she walked away from a successful career at CBS News when she discovered that her producers were more interested in pushing an approved “narrative” than they were in telling the truth. Gradually, over a number of months, she came to the realization that her stories were being censored out of existence because of pressure from politicians and corporate sponsors. She had the courage - and the support of her family - to walk away from a job she found as humiliating as it was frustrating. Now, she has a nonpartisan Sunday-morning news show on the Sinclair network called Full Measure with Sharyl Attikisson and produces some of the most informative podcasts anywhere. In other words, her bonafides are the real deal.

As Attkisson sees it, journalists “have blended opinion and reporting. We’ve self-censored people and topics. We’ve stepped in to try to shape public opinion rather than report the facts. It is only with this recognition of the fact that we have a problem that well-intended, serious journalists can begin to solve it.” The problem is that the vast majority of the news media have an agreed upon narrative to sell to the public and they get away with lying or distorting the truth all too easily. So why should they reform themselves when their propaganda is so successful? And they have been so successful that Attkisson says, “The information landscape becomes ever narrower, squashing diversity of thought and facts. Pretty soon, we won’t know what we don’t know. And that will be that.” 

And it gets worse because pollsters have now transformed a once-enlightening tool into just another propaganda technique to sell the “The Narrative.” According to the author, “Just as The Narrative calls upon the news to codify certain story lines, political polls are now widely used for the same purpose. Polls have morphed from providing a snapshot of pubic opinion at a moment in time into being an indispensable tool used to shape voter opinion.” They simply cannot, and should not be trusted, any longer.

I’m going to end this with a long quote from Chapter 10 of Slanted because I believe that it perfectly captures the dangerous world we are living in today, a world in which we can no longer trust the news that we hear all day long, every day of the year - those same two or three stories that are pushed at us over and over again so steadily that we cannot avoid them even if we want to. Even if they are largely little more than outright lies, distortions, and omissions:

“The trend of mainstream media outlets actings as police and enforcers over other media is a shocking change in our news landscape. Reporters are now less concerned with facts and more with demanding adherence to The Narrative. They determine the position that is to be taken on issues or the facts that can be written about. They use their platform to insist that theirs is the only right and correct view. They convince their colleagues that the job of a reporter is not to be neutral or fair but to take the ‘correct’ position. They define the parameters of the language deemed acceptable or unacceptable for the media to use when covering an issue. They punish, cajole, and threaten those who do not comply. In other words, instead of covering the news, they attack those who are off narrative and cover that as if it is big news. Their goal is to stop the freethinking, independent interlopers. To make it where nobody dares to go off script or disclose the facts or ask questions that the media bullies want to keep hidden.”

Thank God, they could not “stop” Sheryl Attkisson.

On a more hopeful note, Attkisson closes Slanted with a list of reporters and organizations that also refuse to be stopped. The list includes reporters from NBC, CBS, ABC, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Sinclair, and ESPN. Among them are people like Howie Kurtz, James Rosen, Pete Williams, David Martin, Peter Schweizer, Lara Logan, Greg Jarrett, and John Solomon. Listed organizations include: The Epoch Times, RealClearPolitics, Just the News, The Hill, Wikileaks, the Wall Street Journal, and business news channels like CNBC, Fox Business, and Bloomberg. Conspicuous by their absence are the New York Times, CNN, PBS, and the Washington Post.

If you’ve had the patience to read to this point, this book is for you. You are someone willing to make the required commitment to thinking for yourself. You are not one of the millions who have simply tuned out because the static is just too much to deal with. Sharyl Attkisson is a name you need to remember, a journalist who will help you find the truth. You need to read this book.

Sharyl Attkisson

Strongheart - Jim Fergus

Strongheart is the final chapter of the western trilogy that Jim Fergus began in 1998 with One Thousand White Women. In that first novel, President Grant and Cheyenne Nation chief Little Wolf agreed on an exchange of one thousand white women for one thousand of the tribe’s best horses. But don’t be mislead by that one-horse-for-one-woman trade because the entire trilogy is a strong pro-feminism statement about the power of women to adapt to new challenges while at the same time influencing the dominant culture in positive ways. 

All three books are based upon diaries and journals kept by some of the most influential women who joined the tribe: May Dodd, who was released from a Chicago mental institution so that she could be part of the initial trade; Irish twins Meggie and Susie Kelly; and Mollie McGill, whose words are so large a part of Strongheart. As a result, the reader experiences life with the Cherokee through the eyes of some of the strongest women imaginable exactly as they experienced it on a daily basis. 

Contemporary characters in Strongheart include Molly Standing Bear, descendent of one of the diarists, and JW Dodd, son of the man who first published a portion of the diaries in a Chicago magazine called Chitown when JW was just a boy. Molly and JW shared a mutual crush as pre-teens, and because of that, Molly has decided now to share more of the historical diaries that have come into her possession so that JW, as the magazine’s current editor, can publish them as his father did before him. 

Strongheart picks up the story shortly after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, a battle that would prove to be the short-lived immediate victory that would ultimately doom forever the way of life the tribes so precariously held on to. By this point in the story, the women have successfully married into the tribe and have children of their own. Sadly, however, many of the mothers and their children have been killed even before the Little Bighorn fight by surprise attacks on their villages by American soldiers. Now, the tribes have broken into smaller groups all in search of a place to safely make it through the coming winter. 

Despite the odds against them, a group of white warrior women and the Cherokee women who trained them, is determined to take up the fight for survival alongside their men. Others in the tribe make a different decision for themselves and their children. This is their story.

Bottom Line: The One Thousand White Women trilogy is about a group of courageous women who learn that they are more equal in the world created by “savages” than they ever will be in the “civilized” world from which they came - and some of them are not ready to give up that life even if they have to die to keep it. The story is rightly sympathetic to the plight of the women and their new families, but it shares that sympathy, too, with the often-bewildered boy soldiers who oppose them. Note, also, that there is much here that those interested in the sociology of America’s indigenous people during this tragic era are certain to appreciate. 

Jim Fergus