Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 416
Printing Date: May 16, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 487617
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Product Description:
A New York Times Bestselling Author
In Los Angeles in 1988, a 16-year-old girl was found dead with a single gunshot wound to the chest. Although detectives on the case found clues that pointed toward murder, no one was ever charged. Detective Harry Bosch, newly returned to the LAPD with the job of closing unsolved cases, gets the report of a new DNA match that makes the case very much alive again. A white supremacist with close ties to the LAPD becomes a suspect - but Bosch and his partner, Kizmin Rider, can't take a step without threatening higher-ups in the department. And the case turns out to be anything but cold. Everywhere he probes, Bosch finds hot grief, hot rage, and a bottomless well of treachery and danger.
Amazon.com Review:
'A city that forgets its murder victims is a city lost. This is where we don't forget,' Detective Hieronymus 'Harry' Bosch is told by his new boss, as he ends a three-year retirement and rejoins the Los Angeles Police Department at the start of The Closers, the 11th installment of Michael Connelly's Edgar-winning series. Having long ago demonstrated his knack for cracking previously unsolved homicides, Bosch is assigned to the newly re-branded Open-Unsolved Unit (aka 'cold case' squad), and charged with resolving the 17-year-old abduction and slaying of a mixed-race teenager.
Rebecca Verloren, 16, was discovered missing from her Chatsworth home on a July morning in 1988. Her corpse and the gun that ended her life were later found on a hill behind the house. An autopsy revealed that she'd recently undergone an abortion, and a piece of skin tissue--presumably the killer's--was found trapped inside the murder weapon. Only now, though, has DNA science matched that tissue to Roland Mackey, a dyslexic 35-year-old tow-truck operator with no obvious connection to the deceased. It's up to Bosch, once more partnered with Kizmin Rider, to determine whether Mackey offed Becky Verloren, or was at least an accessory to that tragedy. But the more Bosch and Rider dig into this dusty crime, trying in part to determine whether racial animosity might have been involved, the more pain and resistance they encounter. Becky's white mother maintains the teen's old bedroom as a shrine, while her shattered father, an African-American chef, has vanished into LA's homeless community. Of the two original investigators on the case, one has since committed suicide, and Bosch suspects that the other--now a police commander--is helping to keep the lid tight on some old departmental secrets, perhaps linked to our hero's nemesis, Deputy Chief Irvin S. Irving.
Understandably rusty after three years sans shield, Bosch makes his share of personal and professional mistakes here--including one that supplies The Closers with a lethal, plot-turning climax. But the greater problem is that Connelly exhausts so much time and effort following his protagonist through the tedium of modern police procedures, that he neglects what readers have liked more about this series in the past: its persistently deft exploration of Bosch's lonely, haunted soul (which remains mostly out of sight in this tale), and the author's frequent flights of lyrical prose (also not much in evidence). Would-be novelists wanting an example of a solidly constructed cop tale need look no further than The Closers. But readers hoping to learn why Connelly is so well-respected in this genre should turn, instead, to previous Bosch titles such as The Concrete Blonde, Angel's Flight, or City of Bones. --J. Kingston Pierce
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Rated by buyers -
I must agree with anothe reviewer who said the book was tedious. I love Harry but this one was painful. I knew by the middle of the book who killed her. I don't like guessing correctly. It used to be there were several good twists and turns and the who-dun-it was a complete surprise. It was OBVIOUS it wasn't Mackey and way too much time was spent theorizing how it might still be him. Connelly never introduced another possible suspect or two. Or investigated who did the abortion. Who went with her? Who paid for it? I'm not wild about Kiz either. Why not have a partner who introduces some pizzazz to the story?
Rated by buyers -
I liked this one. Connelly had been suffering with some mediocre additions to the Bosch series and he brought the level back up with this one.
Good plot, good characterizations, believeable dialogue, nice pace.
This is one of the better of the series.
Rated by buyers -
I skipped the arc when Harry Bosch became a private investigator mainly because I felt by the time of Darkness More Than Night Connelly is having a difficult time keeping pace with the onslaught of crime TV shows like CSI, Cold Case, Without A Trace, Law & Order, etc. when it comes to plotting and twists. Well, there's still that feeling with The Closers but here he acknowledges it with a self-referential wink. So when I cracked open The Closers and started reading it, I immediately sensed a return to the Harry Bosch I followed from Black Ice until the meanderings of his later series.
The story and writing are fast paced, clear and concise. The Closers is an efficient police procedural mixed with a moralistic theme. What started out as simple unclosed murder investigation becomes a complicated police corruption saga. And continuing with the TV comparisons, it's like Cold Case mixed with The Shield.
It could've one of the better Bosch books, almost elevating it from the daily, by the numbers whodunit we read and view in popular media... until the identity of the murderer was revealed, which was quite predictable it was anti-climactic. Still, it's a good pickup. For those of you who closed the book on the Harry Bosch series, The Closers should open it up again for you.
Rated by buyers -
Three years after his retirement, Harry Bosch is invited back to join the Open/Unsolved Unit for the LAPD. He is part of a team whose sole focus is to try to close old cases. Harry gets a case of a teenage girl drug from her home and apparently killed behind her house up on Oat Mountain. When he finds DNA evidence that points to a small-time crook, Harry pushes farther, unsatisfied with what he has discovered. What he finds out will shock you.
Like all of the Harry Bosch books, this is fairly dark and full of twists and turns that will keep you turning the pages long past your normal light's out. Don't miss it!
Rated by buyers -
This is a "back-to-the-basics" story in several ways. After adopting (for the very first time in the series) a 1st person narrative for the last 2 novels, Lost Light and The Narrows, Michael Connelly returns to the 3rd person, which is what was used for the other books in the series. The plot itself also takes a much simpler, more straightforward approach.
After a fairly slow start (in which I also had to adjust to the 3rd person again, which was difficult for me,) I then became engrossed in the book and finished it in very quick time. Like all Connelly books it's a page-turner and it's very well thought out. There was one scene where a small side character from The Narrows was briefly mentioned and for some strange reason that mention was one of the best parts of the book for me, because it reminded me of how well put together this series is and how it really does continue the story.
That said, there are some issues I had. Although the Harry Bosch novels in the past had seemed startlingly realistic, this one at times journeys into what I call "Hollywoodizations." The way a warrant for a bugging is obtained and the final fate of the villain just didn't seem like it would actually happen in real life....maybe the movies, but not reality. And a divorced mother taking her daughter away from the father to spend presumably months in Hong Kong? What?
But my biggest complaint would be that as much as I loved the book while reading it, when I got to the end and all was said and done it all felt a bit hollow to me. Very little of the book seemed to really ...matter in the grand scheme of things, which brought to light that The Closers presented some of Harry Bosch's worst mystery-solving to date. The way he and his team handled this case bordered on incompetent at times. I understand that Bosch, who just rejoined the force after extensive retirement, was a bit rusty, but even that angle doesn't exactly make sense, since during retirement (Lost Light, The Narrows) he solved two of his most complex, most challenging, and most dangerous mysteries to date.
But anyway, that aside, it's a great story and a real page-turner with Connelly's typical surprises intact (Although again, due to the more simplistic nature of the mystery there are fewer of them) and it's recommended to fans of the series, although people new to the Harry Bosch novels might want to start with a more memorable and eventful installment.
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