The Concrete Blonde

May 30, 1994
In this fiendishly plotted combination of courtroom drama and police procedural, Connelly's LAPD detective Hieronymous ``Harry'' Bosch, introduced in the Edgar-winning The Black Echo , is up against the law as well as his superiors. The widow of Norman Church, a serial killer identified as the Dollmaker, whom Bosch shot to death four years earlier, is suing Bosch on the grounds that he violated her husband's civil rights. Strong but not conclusive evidence linked Church to the serial murders and the case was closed, although Bosch was demoted for not following proper procedures. Here, just before the trial targeting Bosch as a reckless cowboy who shot the wrong man gets underway, the body of perhaps another Dollmaker victim is unearthed from the concrete floor of a burnt-out pool hall. Is the real Dollmaker still alive, or is a copycat killer on the loose? Connelly deftly parcels out clues and possibilities while juggling subtle and detailed courtroom scenes with no-nonsense police investigations that turn up new evidence about the original case. A Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times , he adroitly laces the plot with twists and turns based on details drawn from Bosch's previous adventures. The results of this care show on every page, all to the reader's benefit.

February 1, 1994
Harry Bosch, hero of the Edgar Award-winning The Black Echo ( LJ 1/92), is in hot water: the family of a serial killer whom Bosch shot during an arrest accuses him of killing the wrong man.

June 1, 1994
In his latest adventure, LAPD detective Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch--whose first excursion, "The Black Echo" (1992), won an Edgar--moves into Scott Turow territory. Bosch is Exhibit A in a civil suit against the city filed by the family of a man Bosch killed: a man he and the police believe was the serial murderer of prostitutes and porn stars whom the media dubbed the Dollmaker. As Bosch's trial opens, however, a Dollmaker-style note directs the police to a woman's body buried in concrete, a "concrete blonde" who turns out to have been murdered with all the Dollmaker's trademarks "after" Bosch killed the suspect. Did Bosch kill the wrong man? Strongly plotted and deftly orchestrated, the novel shifts back and forth between the courtroom and the streets, between Bosch's often troubled relationships with his professional colleagues and his deepening love affair with the schoolteacher widow of a brother officer, and between Bosch's unaccustomed self-doubts and his suspicions of others. A fast-paced, classy mystery. ((Reviewed June 1994))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1994, American Library Association.)