Pun Salad

Michael Connelly is on the short list of authors I'm trying to catch up with. By my count, this 2001 book was his tenth novel, and he's currently up around twenty. At this rate… ah, it's too depressing to think about.

But Connelly's really, really, good. If you like hard-boiled crime fiction, you'll like him. This one is long, about 470 paperback pages, but it's a page turner.

It has two main characters, both from previous Connelly books: Terry McCaleb from Blood Work, and Harry Bosch from a lot of previous books. McCaleb is fragile, a heart transplant patient taking over fifty pills a a day. He's married to the sister of his heart's previous owner (long story there), and is living a more or less contented life on Catalina.

But in his previous life, McCaleb was an FBI profiler, one of the best. A stumped local cop pulls him into a murder case, and McCaleb's investigation points to an unlikely suspect: the aforementioned LAPD detective Harry Bosch, who had tried and failed to nail the victim for the murder of a prostitute.

What's going on? Harry has been the hero of a number of previous Connelly books, but he's always been a little less likeable and a little more squirrelly than your traditional crime fiction protagonist. Could he have gone that far around the bend, though?

Anyway, it's a compelling and suspenseful read, with a thrilling climax, a satisfying conclusion, and a surprise twist right at the very end.