Product Description

LAPD detective Harry Bosch is a loner and a nighthawk. One Sunday he gets a call out on his pager. A body has been found in a drainage tunnel off Mulholland Drive, Hollywood. At first sight, it looks like a routine drugs overdose case, but the one new puncture wound amidst the scars of old tracks leaves Bosch unconvinced. To make matters worse, Harry Bosch recognises the victim. Billy Meadows was a fellow 'tunnel rat' in Vietnam, running against the VC and the fear they all used to call the Black Echo. Bosch believes he let down Billy Meadows once before, so now he is determined to bring the killer to justice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4348 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Synopsis
LAPD detective Harry Bosch is a loner and a nighthawk. One Sunday he gets a call out on his pager. A body has been found in a drainage tunnel off Mulholland Drive, Hollywood. At first sight, it looks like a routine drugs overdose case, but the one new puncture wound amidst the scars of old tracks leaves Bosch unconvinced. To make matters worse, Harry Bosch recognises the victim. Billy Meadows was a fellow 'tunnel rat' in Vietnam, running against the VC and the fear they all used to call the Black Echo. Bosch believes he let down Billy Meadows once before, so now he is determined to bring the killer to justice.

About the Author
A former police reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Connelly is the author of twelve acclaimed Harry Bosch thrillers and several other bestselling novels. He lives in Tampa, Florida, with his wife and daughter.

Customer Reviews

great start to a serial character
I've read all of the Harry Bosch series with moderate to ecstatic enjoyment, so I figured I should check out the beginning of the series and read them through. The books all revolve around Detective Bosch on the Homicide Squad of the Hollywood division, having apparently been demoted from the elite LAPD Robbery Homicide division for his questionable action in a high-profile serial killer case a year previously. (The events of that "Dollmaker" case are detailed in the book The Concrete Blonde, and be warned that key information about that case is revealed in this book.) This backstory establishes Bosch as a highly capable high profile detective who's somewhat of a loose cannon and marked man for LAPD Internal Affairs.

Once it's clear that there's been a murder, Bosch latches onto the case like a pit bull, pushing it through the procedural red tape.
Connelly spent many years covering local crime for the LA Times, and as in the other books of his I've read, has a good eye and ear for bringing all the little bits and pieces of procedure to life. The investigations always seem to point at a series of obvious suspects, but as any good thriller writer will tell you, it isn't always the butler that done it!! Bosch always seems to find himself tangled up with the FBI agents tasked with the investigation into his investigations ! Meanwhile, Internal Affairs has targeted him big time, and he spends a lot of energy evading their slimy grasp. There's a good deal of internal police politics at work, and Connelly does a nice job of bringing the depressing realities of this into the story.

Somewhat less convincing is the character of Bosch himself. He's the ultimate embodiment of the maverick, anti-establishment, "lone wolf"cop, always rubbing superiors the wrong way for no good reason, and generally being obnoxious and provocative in a way that only gets him in hotter water. For someone as self-avowedly committed to justice as he is, you'd think he would be a little smarter about when to mouth off, since the trouble he gets himself into only diverts him from pursuing justice. And of course, he drinks a bunch, smokes a bunch, listens to jazz, and doesn't have a lot of luck with women. Conspiracy-thrillerish by the end. Readers of serial books, Lee Child`s, `Jack Reacher` books are always excellent, as are the `Rebus` books by Ian Rankin, much more violent are the `Soft Target` thrillers by Conrad Jones, but the common threads are the common characters that make us go back for more of the same. Bosch is addictive reading and this is an excellent novel.
It also doesn't help that Connelly gives away what should be a shocking twist toward the end by providing a very obvious clue halfway through the book. These flaws, combined with the coincidence the story is built on and the cliché nature of Bosch, result in a book that works in fits and starts, but isn't nearly as good as it could have been.

A Triple Noir Introduction to a Great Detective Series

How dark can you make a police procedural? Michael Connelly pushes the familiar noir envelope into new dimensions in this dark-as-night-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea story. I call it a triple noir mystery because detective Hieronymus (rhymes with anonymous) Bosch

1. comes from a horrible family background (his mother was a woman who rented by the hour and was murdered, leaving Harry to the foster care system),

2. lived a nightmare as a tunnel-rat fighter in the Vietnamese War, and

3. this investigation has enough darkness in it to put out a search light.

The book's title is a reference back to tunnel fighting.

Most new detective series begin with a character who is breaking in. During the subsequent books, the detective gradually develops skill and a career.

Connelly does something different: Bosch is a virtually burned-out case who lives only to bring down the bad guys (be they in LAPD or outside). He's beyond the classic rebel without a cause (James Dean would have been frightened of our Harry). This story picks up on Harry after he's well along on a slide in losing control over his anger.

It's the weekend and Harry's partner is out selling real estate. Harry covers what appears to be an OD by an addict until things don't add up. Pushing forward, Harry convinces himself it's a murder. No one is happy about it. But life is proceeding until Harry checks in with the FBI to find out about a bank robbery that seems connected. Harry feels like he's stepped into something he shouldn't, but the icy FBI agent, Eleanor Wish, attracts his interest anyway. Soon, the LAPD Internal Affairs team is after Harry. Can he brazen it out and keep his investigation?

This story has more surprises in it than you would expect. Harry also goes off like a Roman candle at the slightest provocation. His "payback" often reminds me of "Dirty Harry." Some of them are pretty funny, but all are powerful. You'll be cheering.

You'll know something funny is going on in the investigation, but you won't be ahead of Harry in figuring it out. Black Echo makes for a more interesting, adventure-laden story that way.

Very nice!

Start here and work through the novels in the order they were written. You have some amazing treats ahead of you.

Entertaining enough!
Always on the lookout for new authors I came across Michael Connelly and his 'Harry Bosch' novels. I decided to give him a go mainly due to the reviews here on Amazon and picked this one as it was the first in the series.

This novel starts out with the aforementioned Harry Bosch (LAPD) being called to the discovery of a body in a tunnel, it was soon apparent that the body belonged to a former colleague of Harrys from this days as a Vietnam 'tunnel rat'. From there the story unfolds at a good pace and it kept my interest throughout.

The repeated references to the 'Dollmaker' case made me actually come back on here and check that this actually was the first of the series as I kept getting the feeling that I'd missed a previous book. Checking confirmed that this was the first book and I believe the 'Dollmaker' case is covered further in a later book.

Definately a recommended read and I'm just about to start on the second of the series 'The Black Ice'