Nine Dragons

September 21, 2009
Bestseller Connelly nimbly balances Harry Bosch's personal and professional lives, both of which take a substantial beating, in his 14th novel to feature the LAPD homicide detective. Bosch, last seen with his recently discovered half-brother, lawyer Mickey Haller, in The Brass Verdict
(2008), investigates the shooting death of a liquor store owner. While the murder has none of the hallmarks of a regular gang hit, Bosch discovers the dead man was paying a weekly protection fee to a man Bosch suspects is part of a Chinese triad. Even though Bosch is warned to drop the case, he doesn't take the threat seriously until he receives a video showing his 13-year-old daughter, Madeline, being kidnapped in Hong Kong, where she lives with her mother and Bosch's ex-wife, a former FBI agent. Bosch flies to Hong Kong to try to rescue Madeline, prepared to face down one of the world's most powerful crime syndicates. Tenacious as ever, Bosch is even more formidable in his role as a protective father. 10-city author tour.

October 12, 2009
An apparently everyday murder in South Los Angeles takes Harry Bosch (The Brass Verdict, 2008, etc.) further and deeper than a case has ever sent him before.

Ordinarily the members of LAPD Robbery-Homicide's Special Homicides squad wouldn't touch a case as routine as the shooting of John Li. The elderly owner of Fortune Fine Foods and Liquors has been shot three times, presumably by the same person or persons who emptied his cash register and the surveillance video. Telltale clues and the testimony of Li's frightened family members, however, suggest that their patriarch may have been executed by triad members when he refused to continue paying for protection. Unlike Ignacio Ferras, still spooked by the bullet he took for his partner, Bosch quickly gets his teeth into the case. But no sooner has he gathered enough evidence to arrest triad bagman Bo-Jing Chang than he's threatened with unspecified evils if he doesn't take off the heat. These evils swiftly assume malevolent shape when Bosch gets word that his daughter Madeline, half a world away in Hong Kong, has been kidnapped. Dropping everything to rescue the 13-year-old he's known for only a few years, he flies to Hong Kong and embarks on a bravura sequence of action set-pieces evidently crafted with both eyes on the movies. ("Oliver Stone will direct it!" Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller exults.) Nine corpses later, Bosch is back in the United States with Madeline. He has to get her settled and deal with her traumatic memories; he has to face the Hong Kong police, who think for some reason that he's a cowboy run amok; and of course he has to solve his case. After the exoticism and high intensity of his Far East adventures, however, these anticlimactic problems are resolved with suspicious facility.

A short-story–sized mystery exploded by the triple-sized dose of vigilante justice Bosch gets to dispense as cop and father.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 28, 2009
LAPD Detective Harry Bosch returns to solve the murder of an owner of a liquor store in Connelly's latest. Evidence leads to a suspect with ties to a powerful Asian gang. Undaunted by this dangerous connection, Bosch apprehends the perpetrator but then hears that his daughter, who is living in Hong Kong with his ex-wife, has been kidnapped. Without the help of his fellow officers, Bosch travels to Hong Kong to rescue his little girl. There he realizes he's running of out time if he's going to save her before his suspect gets released in L.A. Verdict Connelly (The Closers) unveils his most personal Bosch story yet with this fish-out-of-water story. The pages fly, and although the last chapter feels a bit rushed, it doesn't distract from another Connelly masterpiece. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/09; ten-city author tour.]-Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 2009
Every Harry Bosch novel tells two stories: one involving antiestablishment LAPD detective Boschs bullheaded determination to solve the case in front of him; the other tracking the heros inner struggles. This time the two stories come together in what may be the most wrenching Bosch novel yet. It starts with the murder of a Chinese grocery owner in South Central L.A., a man Bosch once met and remembers fondly. The trail leads to the Chinese triads, centuries-old, Mafia-like crime organizations with roots deep in Chinas history. Those roots seem to lead to Hong Kong, current home of Boschs former wife, Eleanor, and 13-year-old daughter, Maddie. When Bosch receives an e-mail video suggesting Maddie has been kidnapped, the case explodes. Over a lost weekend like no other, Bosch flies to Hong Kong and launches a one-man vigilante campaign aimed at rescuing his daughter and solving the murder case. By the end of his 39-hour day, Bosch needs a shower, a new suit, and a therapistand a lawyer. The jagged intersection between a cops personal and professional lives is a recurring theme in many crime novels, but never has it been portrayed with the razor-edge sharpness and psychological acuity that Connelly brings to the subject. And thats layered underneath the nonstop action of the novels last halfthe kind of full-throttle, blood-spattered narrative road race one associates with Lee Child or Stephen Hunter. Theres always something new around Harry Boschs next corner, and he has the scars to prove it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)