Pun Salad

Michael Connelly is a current master of the crime/mystery/thriller genre; he deserves his automatic position on the best-seller lists for each of his books. I was a relative latecomer, and I finally made it up to this 2004 book. Interestingly, it sequelizes a number of Connelly's previous works: The Poet, which involved FBI agent Rachel Walling's trackdown of a brilliant serial killer; Blood Work, which involved ex-FBI agent Terry McCaleb's investigation into the murder of a young woman who—don't ask— was the donor of Terry's transplanted heart; and A Darkness More Than Night, which teamed up McCaleb with Connelly's primary crimefighter, Harry Bosch. Just so you know: you might want to read those books before you crack this one.

So: in this one, Terry McCaleb has kicked the bucket; seemingly his transplanted heart failed him. But his widow, Graciela, suspects foul play; she calls upon Bosch to investigate.

Meanwhile, disgraced Rachel Walling from The Poet is summoned out of FBI exile status in South Dakota. Apparently the serial killer from that book has re-emerged, and she's off to the desert between LA and Vegas to investigate the grisly evidence thereof.

Eventually, surprising everyone but the attentive reader, Bosch's investigation leads him smack dab into the FBI's.

As always, Connelly keeps me turning the pages. One bit I particularly enjoyed: here in the real world, they made a movie based on Blood Work starring Clint Eastwood as Terry McCaleb. In the fictional universe of the book, that movie has also been made, also starring Clint Eastwood. In a nice touch, Mr. Eastwood attends McCaleb's funeral. "I think he took his own helicopter out," comments one character. It's kind of reminiscent of how Sherlock Holmes used to tweak Dr. Watson for his popularizations of their investigations.