Monday, March 31, 2008
The Closers
**** The Closers by Michael Connelly. Mystery.
I'd bought this used to take advantage of reduced shipping from a seller on Half.com after noting that several friends enjoyed Connelly's books.
This is the eleventh book in the Harry Bosch series, possibly not the best place to start reading a new author.
Harry Bosch had left the LAPD, but has now returned and is assigned to the new cold case unit. Along with his partner Kiz Rider, the first case they investigate is that of a 16-year-old girl killed seventeen years earlier. Initially treated as a suicide, then deemed a murder, and by that time the trail had gone cold.
But there'd been blood on the weapon that killed her that didn't belong to the girl, and now there's DNA testing that there hadn't been in 1988. The DNA points to a white supremacist who'd been 18 at the time, but there's no way to connect him to the girl. In addition, the DNA evidence only links him to the gun, but not to the murder itself.
But as Bosch and Rider keep investigating, they get more and more resistance--not just from the girl's family and friends, but from within the police department as well.
This is an intriguing whodunit with plenty of twists and turns. I enjoyed following along through the investigation and seeing where it led. I liked the puzzle; I liked the book. I didn't love it, though. It was too sterile, too devoid of personality. I never really got any sense of who Bosch was; I never cared about him. He was more just there to facilitate the plot. From reading other reviews, I surmise that other books in the series do more character development than this one, and perhaps if I'd gotten to know him over the course of ten previous books, I wouldn't have felt the lack so keenly in this one.
But that's okay. I don't have to love all the books I read--that would get exhausting. I enjoyed the whodunit, and while I'm not rushing out to find more Michael Connelly books, I don't intend to put them on my don't-buy list, either.
Categories: Books, 4stars, Mystery
Labels: 4 stars, books, mystery
