The Last Coyote

Starred review from May 29, 1995
In his fourth outing, LAPD Homicide Detective Harry Bosch (The Concrete Blonde, et al.) confronts deep family, police and political secrets as he probes an unsolved murder of decades earlier. Smart, tough, laconic and, under all that, compassionate, Harry lives by a code according to which ``Everybody counts or nobody counts... whether a prostitute or the mayor's wife.'' He begins this case in a departmental shrink's office, after having been suspended for attacking his commanding officer; his girlfriend has left him, and he's living in a house that's been condemned after an earthquake. In the enforced freedom from his job, he reopens the 30-year-old unsolved murder of an L.A. call girl--his mother. Skirting illegality along the way to the resolution, he unearths a lot of buried secrets and pain--not least to his own 11-year-old self. Nobody here is pure (a couple of people are truly nasty), but all the characters are believable, as are even the quirkier plot turns. Edgar-winner Connelly smoothly mixes Harry's detecting forays with his therapy sessions to dramatize how, sometimes, the biggest mystery is the self. BOMC alternate.

February 15, 1995
Harry Bosch, protagonist of the Edgar Award-winning The Black Echo (LJ 1/92), investigates his mother's murder.

June 1, 1995
The third appearance of L.A. police detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch finds the renegade cop's life in even more of a mess than usual. He's hiding out in his own earthquake-demolished, condemned home, and he's been suspended from the force for sticking his commander's face through a window. He's got time to kill, so he unearths the 30-year-old, unsolved murder of a Hollywood whore named Marjorie Lowe. Harry happens to be the victim's son, and in the midst of his midlife crisis, it becomes necessary for him to find out who killed her. The first step is to interview the surviving investigating officer, Jake McKittrick, who points Harry back into a past of corruption, greed, ambition, and blackmail. Today's self-help literature frequently asks readers to reassess their pasts, but too often what they find becomes an excuse. Harry examines his past, acknowledges the damage, and sets out to heal himself. It's heady territory for a cop novel, but Edgar winner Connelly handles it with style and grace. ((Reviewed June 1 & 15, 1995))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1995, American Library Association.)