The Wrong Side of Goodbye

October 3, 2016
Bestseller Connolly’s canny detective, Harry Bosch, remains a compelling lead, but even longtime fans may feel that his creator gives him a few too many fortuitous breaks in his 21st outing (after 2015’s The Crossing). Bosch’s long career with the LAPD is a thing of the past, and he now divides his time between PI work and pro bono service as a reserve police officer for the city of San Fernando. He gets involved in an apparently impossible case for an extremely wealthy client, Whitney Vance, who pays Bosch $10,000 just to agree to a meeting. The 85-year-old Vance asks Bosch to find out, in complete secrecy, what became of the woman Vance impregnated 65 years earlier and who disappeared from his life almost immediately afterward. The billionaire, who believes he is nearing his end, hopes the investigator can ascertain whether he has a living heir. Though the trail is beyond cold, Bosch lucks into a solid lead. The multiple contrivances significantly diminish the plot. Agent: Philip Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary.

Narrator Titus Welliver has developed a great voice for detective Harry Bosch over several titles, and here again in twin investigations that touch on Bosch's family, especially his daughter, Maddie. While working on a serial rapist "screen cutter" case in the small community of San Fernando, Bosch is asked by a reclusive aviation billionaire to find an heir who may or may not exist. Welliver uses subtle changes in tone and pitch to find unique voices for various characters. When Bosch's partner goes missing, Welliver ramps-up the tension using swift pacing and increased volume. Music at the ends of chapters is a bonus. Welliver's narration maintains the laid-back persona of Bosch while evoking his drive to save his partner from one of the most dangerous psychopaths they've ever encountered. A great mystery and a great narration are a winning combination. S.C.A. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

January 30, 2017
Welliver, who portrays protagonist Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch in the Amazon Prime TV adaptation of Connelly’s series, clearly has no problem embodying the tough, almost obsessively dedicated Southern California crime fighter. But the actor’s previous work in supporting roles serve him equally well when dealing with the other characters that inhabit Harry’s literary landscape. Prominent among them in Bosch #21 is reclusive octogenarian billionaire Whitney Vance. In a voice soft and croaky with age and infirmity, he hires Harry as a private detective to find out if he has a living heir from an affair 65 years before. Simultaneously, at the San Fernando PD—where the former LAPD sleuth is stationed as an unpaid reserve officer working under a slow-talking sympathetic police chief and a captain whose speech suggests suspicion and animosity—Harry is assigned the investigation of the Screen Cutter serial rapist. The two cases remain separate, pulling Harry in two directions and introducing him to fellow cops, young and old witnesses, male and female persons of interest, and two very different villains (the smarmy rapist and a sophisticated murderer), all enacted with apparent ease by the versatile Welliver. A Little, Brown hardcover.