Product Description

Harry is back, assigned to the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit with his former cop ally and partner, Kizmin Rider. These detectives are the Closers. They are thrown into a politically sensitive and dangerous case when a white supremacist is connected to the 1988 murder of a mixed race girl. The police department has changed, but one thing hasn't - Harry's nemesis, Irving. The former Deputy Chief has been pushed from power and given a virtually meaningless new role. Full of vengeance, Irving calls Harry a 'retread'. He watches from the sidelines like an injured bear, hoping Harry will make a mistake ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14819 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-11
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Closers puts Harry Bosch back in the Los Angelese Police Department, where he was meant to be, and sets him to solving old cases, which is what he always did best, alongside Kiz Rider, who was always the best of the partners fate, and Connolly, gave him. They are working on the death of a bi-racial teenager back in the 1980s, abducted from her bedroom and shot dead. The racial tensions of the time are clearly a factor - the DNA of a known racist is trapped in blood on the gun - but in a Michael Connolly novel, things are never as simple as they seem. And Bosch finds, not to his especial surprise, that he has been asked back into the LAPD as someone's weapon in the dance of departmental politics. The death of Backy Verloren was a tragedy - the investigation of her murder was a series of mistakes that left her father an alcoholic mess and her mother an obsessive trapped in the past, and someone profited by their misery. Connolly is always at his best when Harry is caught up in the problems of other people, rather than his own, and this excellent, twisty police procedural is a snappy return to form. --Roz Kaveney

SUNDAY SPORT
'There's a mountain of American detective fiction. At the summit are Connelly's Harry Bosch books.'

Review
'A scrupulously plotted procedural ... and all the excitements of a terrific thriller well paced by a cool and fast running narrative.' (Philip Oakes LITERARY REVIEW )

'There's a mountain of American detective fiction. At the summit are Connelly's Harry Bosch books.' (SUNDAY SPORT )

'A cracking return to form by Connelly, and we can only hope Harry Bosch doesn't apply for retirement again.' (IRISH INDEPENDENT )

'The Closers is more than just a terrific mystery that slowly builds into a breathless race against time, twisting and turning to the very last page. It is a fascinating portrait of a city ... It also highlights, with great sensitivity. 'the toll of violence over time'. However, as usual, hardbitten Harry [Bosch] is the main attraction. He's exactly the kind of cop you'd want to investigate your own murder.' (Mark Sanderson EVENING STANDARD )

'Michael Connelly is always reliable and The Closers is as dark and thrilling as ever' (Carla McKay DAILY MAIL )

'A return to form.' (Maxim Jakubowski THE GUARDIAN )

Customer Reviews

connelly just gets better and better!
After a two year retirement Detective Harry Bosch is back with the LAPD currently assigned to the cold case files. The first case out the of the chute is the killing of a highschool teen 17 years prior. the case is reopened after blood is matched to that found on the murder weapon -- DNA evidence, and the blood belongs to local white supremacist Roland Mackey (of mixed race himself black father white mother). This might all sound like an episode of CSI, but as Connelly always does he deftly takes the reader deeper into the characters and the plot finding meaning beyound just a police procedural who-dun-it. To my mind no one tops Connelly in this genre, and even those who don't normally read thrillers should take a stabe at Conelly. This book and "A Tourist in the Yucatan" have been my favorite thriller reads of 2005! Tourist is a rough little gem, check it out!

Open-Unsolved Unit- aka Cold Case
Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch is back in all his glory. Michael Connelly, in his eleventh novel, has brought Harry back to the Los Angeles Police Department. Harry had retired but after three years his feet were itchy to get back to his real love, LAPD. He was invited back by his old partner, Kismin Rider. She is a smart, tough but warm detective and very much respected by her peers.

Harry came back to the Open-Unsolved Unit (aka "cold case" squad). This excited him. He had so many unsolved crimes in his career, and in his mind he could picture many of them. On his first day at the squad he was obtaining coffee for his partner when his old nemesis, Deputy Chief Irvin S. Irving, gave him a warning, "Watch your step, Harry, there are many watching you!" This threat didn't bother Harry, but the fact that Irving sought him out made Harry wonder what the real story was all about. Later that day, Harry and Rizen were given their first case. Rebecca Verloren, 16, was discovered missing from her Chatsworth home many years ago, and now, there was a new DNA clue to help them solve this mystery.

Along the way Harry relies upon his skills, sometimes a bit rusty, but his "gut" is so sure that he knows what clues to look at and what is real and what is sometimes false. He gets back to his research, and the people he knew before he quit the job. Often, a long ago name or profile will surface, and we wonder how long will it be before this person shows up. A next door neighbor from Las Vegas from one of his last cases bears a remarkable resemblance to one of the people seen in a newspaper article that has a close relationship to this new case. Michael Connelly often inserts small clues about previous stories into his novels, and I find this piece of detective work thrilling. I look forward to each novel to find the most unlikely clues inserted in the most unlikely places.

Harry Bosch has arrived in this novel. He feels at home. He knows his job, he is a seasoned partner, but all the same, this is a new beginning. Harry does his best job and his best reasoning in this novel. Michael Connelly has found the heart of the man in this novel. "The Closers" is the best of the best and highly recommended. prisrob

The Closers, Michael Connelly
After a 3 year hiatus, Harry Bosch is back with the LAPD, largely thanks to his ex-partner Kizmin Rider. Now they're back working together, in the Open-Unsolved department of homicide, hoping to apply new techniques to old, near-forgotten cases in order to catch perpetrators who have so far escaped the reach of justice. The first case they're dealt is the unsolved, 17-year-old murder of teenager Becky Verloren, taken from her bed and shot dead in the hills above her home.

It's a case, with uncomfortable political and racial undercurrents, that sees Harry Bosch back in his element, and Connelly writing close to the top of his game.

Let's face it: Bosch is always at his best when he's getting down and dirty righting wrongs, fighting for justice for those who can no longer get it for themselves. He is, unfailingly, at his best in the thick of a case, usually one that has lain cold for a long time. Connelly is at his best, too, with these kinds of cases, and he is even more able to render the keen and sharp sting of injustice when it's a state of affairs that has stood for a long time. He's at his best when race is an issue, too, even a tangential one as here. The Closers is near his best, then? Without a doubt, in my opinion.

While The Narrows was a great thriller, it wasn't really such a great detective novel. Seems that way a year later, anyway. Looking back, the impression is that it went very fast, seemed to be over almost too quickly. Enjoyable and high-class fiction, indeed, a thrilling thriller indeed also, but lacking that vital something which makes a good Bosch novel a great one, which this new one is. Back in LA, back in Homicide, Harry is where he really belongs, and you feel it. Harry seems wonderfully at home, less restless, more content than he's been in a while, and you're only able to feel glad about it. His new boss isn't out to get him, either, which is a refreshing change: there's a great potential new relationship here that could prove fertile ground in future novels.

With Harry back where he belongs, Connelly's able to do what he's always been so good at: atomise Los Angeles, a city where, despite its name, no one seems to be entirely innocent, and a city full of contrasts:

"It was a city full of haves and have nots, movie stars and extras, drivers and the driven, predators and pre. The fat and the hungry and little room in between. A city that despite all of that would still have them lining up and waiting every day behind the bomb barricades to get in."

Like its real-life counterpart, Connelly's L.A. has a fascinating, hypnotic pull that keeps me coming back, glad to be there every time.

Though the plot threatens to drag for a little while in the middle, largely due to lack of progress on the case (and thus in the book), in the end the whole thing pays off as satisfyingly (hugely so) as the first pages would suggest, with a truly excellent close. Another huge success, complete with a couple of deep punches to the gut.