Angels Flight

September 2, 2013
Connellyâs novel follows series hero Harry Boschâs investigation into the murder of an African-American defense attorney who made a career of courtroom victories at the expense of the Los Angeles Police Department. This installment in the series is especially dark, and narrator Peter Gilesâs reads in a voice that echoes with the dry croaking of a lifelong smokerâsomething that establishes a noirlike mood from the get-go. The narrator ably matches Boschâs downbeat mood, shifting from anger at having to deal with racism, not just in his city but within the ranks of the LAPD, to weariness, sadness, and frustration at his inability to stop the disintegration of his marriage. Giles sands some of the roughness from his voice and pitches it slightly higher for the bookâs female characters, like the detectiveâs soon-to-be-separated wife and his partner, Kiz Rider. But thereâs still an edge rough enough to remind us weâre not listening to an Agatha Christie cozy. A Grand Central paperback.

January 4, 1999
Hollywood homicide detective Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch (Trunk Music, 1996, etc.) is up to his very stiff neck in politics, police corruption and racial tension. The echo of the Rodney King case is almost deafening when Howard Elias, an African American lawyer famous for suing the LAPD for racially motivated brutality, is shot dead on the short train run up a steep hill in downtown L.A. known as Angels Flight. Bosch and his team--a black woman named Kizmin Rider and a black man named Jerry Edgar--are assigned the highly sensitive case. Although Bosch sniffs racial and departmental political hokum among the brass, he doggedly focuses on finding the killer, knowing that cops will be among the suspects. It all smells even worse when Bosch discovers signs of evidence tampering by the first cops on the crime scene and learns that the civilian attorney assigned to oversee the investigation had personal ties to Elias. A bit of a cowboy anyway, Bosch is even more ornery than usual, since his wife has gone AWOL and returned to gambling. Further hampered by a secretive and even obstructive departmental leadership and by his former partner's apparent links to the crime, Bosch moves well outside the rules to discover the ugly motivation for the killing. Connelly has all the hard-boiled procedural moves down and gives Bosch a reckless crusader's moral code. The finale, set against riots, delivers a brutal, anti-establishment sort of justice. This isn't Connelly's best; the plot is sufficiently ornate to diffuse tension, and Bosch seems to be evolving from the true character of early books into a sort of icon, a Dirty Harry for our times. Simultaneous Time Warner audio; author tour.

September 15, 1998
A black lawyer famed for his antidiscrimination suits against the LAPD is murdered before a big trial, and guess who gets to investigate? Connelly's hotshot Harry Bosch, of course.

October 15, 1998
In his compelling Harry Bosch novels, Connelly typically puts the onetime Vietnam tunnel rat turned LAPD detective into one tight spot after another. Here Harry is assigned to investigate a murder that threatens to set the city ablaze. African American attorney Howard Elias, who has become rich and famous suing LAPD for brutality, is murdered on the eve of his biggest case. Thousands of cops are likely suspects, and with the memory of the Rodney King incident fresh, police brass are looking for any kind of spin control they can find. Harry, last seen in the outstanding "Trunk Music" (1996), is promptly saddled with "assistance" from the Internal Affairs Division, the FBI, and LAPD's independently appointed inspector general, who Bosch soon learns was Elias' lover. To torque up the pressures as Bosch doggedly sorts red herrings and pursues the killer, Connelly has Harry's year-old marriage unraveling while he's trying to quit smoking. Two-thirds of the way through the book, the focus of the investigation changes to a celebrated child murder case and rich and powerful Internet pedophiles. Connelly makes all the necessary connections, but Bosch fans may feel that the author works too hard to create the tightest rat hole yet. Even so, Connelly at less than his best still merits attention. ((Reviewed October 15, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)