FBI agent Rachel Walling finally gets the call shes dreaded for years. The Poet has returned. Years earlier she worked on the famous case tracking the serial killer who wove lines of poetry into his hideous crimes. Rachel has never forgotten the Poetand apparently he has not forgotten her. Former LAPD detective Harry Bosch gets a call too, from an old friend whose husband has recently died. The death appeared natural, but this mans ties to the hunt for the Poet make Harry dig deep. What he finds leads him into the most terrifying situation he has ever encountered. So begins the most deeply compelling, frightening, and masterful novel Michael Connelly has ever written, placing Harry Bosch squarely in the path of the most ruthless and ingenious murderer in Los Angeles history.
This installment of the Harry Bosch series is disappointing. Bosch and FBI agent Rachel Walling meet up to chase a serial killer - Walling's former boss who was head of the FBI division that profiles serial killers, and as such an expert in playing the head games associated with serial killers. Bosch is retired from the LAPD but investigating the suspicious death of a friend, a former FBI agent himself.
The Bosch series' realism works well for police procedurals, less so for the private-eye genre, contrived as it is. In reality private investigators go after cheating spouses or provide business-related security or espionage; only in novels do they solve murders. And the fictional necessities to make a novel out of the latter - the loneliness, the crossing of swords with just-don't-get-it police making it impossible to join forces or seek their help, the mano-a-mano with the bad guy, the following of lengthy trails of clues - are all too contrived to do justice to Bosch. Connelly has to stretch quite a bit to have Walling involved but on the outs with the main investigators, to have her and Bosch continually refuse help or seek backup. The bad guy is also a stretch, too perfect of a serial killing mastermind, and the FBI-agent-gone-bad part is just too much. Don't get me wrong, this book isn't bad, but it isn't as good as some of the others.
writes,
Most Michael Connelly fans will remember FBI profiler and heart transplant survivor Terry McCabe, from the book Blood Work (and some may have seen the movie of the same name starring Clint Eastwood), as well as L.A.P.D. detective Harry Bosch (The Closers, Trunk Music, etc.) currently retired from the department and working as a P.I.. Then of course there is Robert Backus, villain extraordinaire with a penchant for the poetry of Edgar Alan Poe, who horrified us with his dirty deeds in The Poet.
In The Narrows, Connelly brings together all the characters from these previous novels and adds another, FBI agent Rachel Walling, to the mix as she and Bosch attempt to determine whether the death of Terry McCabe is "by natural causes" as reported on his death certificate or, as his wife suspects, was in fact a deviously planned and executed murder.
Connelly is famous for his character driven plots and of course the world weary Harry Bosch is the driving force in this investigation. Connelly does however deviate from his previous works by delivering the story from the perspective of three characters rather than just one. Throughout, he completely involves the reader by leading us into the labyrinth, throwing us a curve here and there, and slowly feeding us clues that culminate with a solution to the mystery.
Although, in my humble opinion, not the best book Connelly has ever written, it is a solid mystery/thriller that is head and shoulders above a lot of the material currently rolling off the presses at some publishing houses.
writes,
This book was given to me as a gift. I'm not an experienced reader of the Mystery genre and yet this book still felt like it was churned from a formula. The characters felt more like clichés than interesting people that I cared about. I'll stay away from any more books by Connelly and leave them for others to enjoy. Folks who had the same reaction as me may enjoy a great mystery by Michael Chabon titled: The Yiddish Policeman's Union.
