Lost Light

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: No better thriller writer than Connelly! A handful of unexpected developments crop up in Lost Light. There are ties to past series installments, but new readers to the series will have no trouble following events. Refrain from the temptation to read the last page first and you'll be rewarded with a surprise ending. Michael Connelly never disappoints his readers. His writing is consistent and intelligent, as was last proven in Chasing the Dime. It is a pleasure to read his work.

Rating:
Summary: Connelly keeps the Bosch series alive
Review: I have read all of the Bosch series novels by Michael Connelly and this particular read is one of the best! I stayed up all night and read it. I couldn't put it down. This is a classic -who done it- right up till the end. I thought the end was near when in the last novel Bosch turned in his badge but Michael Connelly is a genius in bringing Bosch back to life after retirement. Bosch is once again caring, strong hearted, hot headed, my way or the highway detective. This story is about an old case he started but didn't get to finish and now that he is a P.I. he intends to reopen the case himself and solve the unsolved murder of a young women who was killed brutally while coming home from work from a hollywood movie set. There are several endings to this complicated story but it is the last ending that will have you wondering once again will Bosch, the no nonsense detective, be back. I certainly hope so--this is one of the best detective series on the market. Lost Light is a must read!

Rating:
Summary: The Best of Bosch
Review: Just when you think Michael Connelly might be running out of Harry Bosch' gas, he surprises and comes up with something even better, involving and more provocative than last time. Connelly is certainly one of the best crime novelists of his generation. There's no question that his craftsmanship has become an "art" that transcends the genre. My highest compliment: "I wished I had written "Lost Light."

Rating:
Summary: Tight, Tense, and Compelling.....
Review: It was her hands he would never forget... The unexpected call from Lawton Cross brought it all back to him. Standing at the crime scene, detective Harry Bosch remembered how Angela Benton's hands seemed to be reaching toward him, begging him to solve her murder. He worked the case for only four days before the company she had worked for, Eidolon Productions, was involved in a major robbery. Eidolon was in the process of shooting an action flick about a mob heist and had contracted with BankLA to borrow two million dollars in real bills to use as a prop. The hold-up occurred as the armored truck arrived on the set to deliver the money. Two million, gone without a trace. The case was immediately reassigned to Cross and his partner Jack Dorsey over at the elite, Robbery-Homicide squad since as a production assistant on the movie set, Angela had intimate knowledge of all aspects of the money delivery. Cross and Dorsey worked the robbery/murder until they were unlucky enough to be gunned down while eating lunch during a barroom robbery. Dorsey never knew what hit him and died at the scene. Cross wasn't as fortunate. He was left a quadriplegic, living a life filled with indignities, pain, and misery. But now four years later, he's beginning to remember things about their unfinished investigation, and he wants Harry to start over and rework the case. And Harry's intrigued. Now retired for eight months, after twenty-eight years on the force, he's bored and lonely, looking for direction and happy for the opportunity to reopen a cold case that has always haunted him. And he soon finds that their are forces much larger and more dangerous than the brooding, uncorruptable Harry Bosch at work here who want this mystery to stay buried and unsolved forever..... Michael Connelly's intricate plot is tight, tense, and compelling as his seemingly unrelated storylines twist, turn, and finally come together in an explosive, knock you off your feet climax and clever, unexpected ending. His prose is eloquent and entertaining, and filled with vivid, evocative language, crisp, gritty dialogue, and riveting scenes. But it's Mr Connelly's brilliant characterizations, that as always, make this book a stunner. These are complex, fascinating, real people captured on the page, and he is able to breathe life and magic into even the most minor player. For those new to Michael Connelly and Harry Bosch, start at the beginning with The Black Echo, to get the real flavor of this series, and read them all. For those who are already fans, Lost Light doesn't disappoint and belongs at the very top of every mystery/thriller lovers's "must read" pile.

Rating:
Summary: Bosch keeps getting better
Review: Edgar-Award winner Connelly's latest Harry Bosch finds the former L.A. police detective bored with retirement. With a small prod from another former cop, this one left quadriplegic in a shoot-out, Bosch takes up a four-year-old cold case: the murder of a young movie-production assistant. The murder scene has always stuck with him, though Bosch was taken off the case a few days later when the murder was upstaged by a two million dollar heist and shoot-out on the movie set itself. Though it might seem a tad suspicious when a movie producer insists on the use of two million real, which is promptly stolen, no connection was made and no trace of the money was found. Except for a bill which turned up on a list it shouldn't have been on. A list drawn up by an FBI agent, gone missing.

The case is complex enough to make your head spin, but Bosch always knows just what he's doing, which makes it easier for the rest of us. Tightly plotted and so beautifully written you're drawn deep into Bosch's life almost without noticing, the novel explores the ambivalence of loneliness and the need for a sense of purpose, while delivering a real page-turner. There's also a visceral view into the days and despair of a helpless quadriplegic and the caregiver spouse. And Connelly ("Blood Work," "City of Bones,") provides in-your-face L.A. atmosphere, from the trendy clubs and movie mansions to the crowded freeways and the streets of Hollywood. This is Connelly at his best and you don't get much better than that.

Rating:
Summary: A new incarnation for Harry Bosch
Review: Now retired, Harry becomes a private eye. Well not really. He was last seen leaving the Cathedral of "The Blue Religion" carrying his prayerbook of unresolved cases and has been called back to a particularly troublesome one by the pleas of a paralyzed former cop. This case begins to unravel, as we eventually learn, as a result of pure chance and a computer program catching the anomaly. In the process terrorists, rogue federal agents, good feds (maybe), police politics, the West Coast club scene, the movie industry(I'll pay fifty thousand up front to see the script),insurance company interests and Harry's ex wife become entangled. The solution is satisfying and logical and the final twist provides a sense that there are future plans for Harry. Could he be moving to Nevada like so many retired Californians? I guess we'll know in ten months or so. But until then, if you like Harry, you'll love this one.

Rating:
Summary: Lost Light sticks in mind, hands
Review: From the Nashville City Paper Book Club Column
Saralee Says

When a Michael Connelly novel is published, my husband Larry, and I have to toss a coin to see who gets to read his latest book first, especially those featuring Harry Bosch, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. I must issue a warning - this book is meant to be read in one sitting, it is impossible to put down and I think it is Connelly's best book yet. For those of you who have not read one of Connelly's books, he is a journalist who wrote Blood Work - (a recent movie staring Clint Eastwood) The Poet, and Chasing the Dime. He is from that infamous school of crime, south Florida, which produced authors Carl Hiaasen, Edna Buchanan, and Elmore Leonard. That is about as strong a lineup as you can get. Connelly style of writing is intense, humorous, haunting and compelling.

What does a former homicide detective who could barely survive the internal politics of the police do when he leaves the police department? If you are fifty-two year old Harry Bosch, you become a private investigator and work free-lance. Angella Benton was brutally murdered years ago and she worked for hotshot Alexander Taylor, a pretentious Hollywood producer. Bosch was haunted by her murder because she died with her hands stretched upward as if trying to tell him something and also because she was a nobody and when you are a nobody and are murdered, solving the crime may not be a priority. Bosch was originally assigned to investigate and solve this case but was replaced by police headquarters when it became known that the victim worked for a Hollywood movie company. The higher ups did not really care about the dead woman but the publicity demanded that a team of detectives from headquarters handle the investigation in the correct manner. They never solved it and the murder became a cold case that no one actively worked on.

Now that Bosch is retired the police department can not stop him from working that cold case. Within a period of a week, Bosch has managed to rankle everyone. He gets a direct order from his former partner not to continue to investigate the case. One of the detectives who tried to solve the murder ended up dead, the other paralyzed, but this does not slow Bosch down. It is only when the FBI under the framework of Homeland Security issues a stern warning that Bosch realizes he has stepped into the middle of a puzzle that he will either solve or it will result in his death or both.

Do you think Connelly went too easy or was he too harsh with the FBI and Homeland Security? Was he accurate in his portrayal of the FBI and the way people should be interrogated today?

The ending of this intense novel will make you sit straight up - it is simply one of the best endings ever written in mystery.

Larry's Language

The first question for our City Paper BookClub discussion should be why we picked Michael Connelly's new book, Lost Light, as opposed to hundreds of other good mysteries?

And the answer is, we could have picked many other fine crime novels such as Vapor Trail by Chuck Logan or Naked Prey by John Sandford or Back Story by Robert Parker or A Darker Justice by Nashvillian Sallie Bissell. We could have selected mystery writers like Nevada Barr or Jan Burke or James Crumley or Stuart Woods or James Lee Burke or Nashvillians Steven Womack and Cecelia Tishy.

Lost Light is the one because of its setting in Los Angeles and its character development of Hieronymus, better known as Harry Bosch. How can you resist an author who names his chief detective after a 15th Century Flemish mystical painter best known for his work "Garden of Earthly Delights" which includes the famous panel named Seven Deadly Sins?

In the final analysis, crime novels are judged good or bad based upon the attraction of solving the mystery, the element of suspense, the characters, and the setting. Lost Light is superb in all these ways. The glamour and mystique of southern California is apparent as we meet an arrogant Hollywood director, as we learn some of the production requirements of making a Hollywood movie, and as we travel the mean streets of Los Angeles. The settings picked by those other authors such as small town Minnesota, national parks, Boston, the Everglades, or a Louisiana bayou just do not compare.

The characters in Lost Light make unique contributions to the level of suspense of the story because our understanding of who are the good guys and bad guys changes as the plot progresses. Author Michael Connelly is a genius at misdirecting the attention of the reader and legitimately fooling us. He gives us all the standard reasons to like some of the characters and then shows us why we are wrong. In fact, this is true for one major player right up until the last chapter of the book.

The main character of course is our detective Harry Bosch who was a fiercely independent Los Angles Police Department investigator but could not live within the bureaucracy and could not abide the official police culture. Now he exists in a purgatory of part acceptance, part rejection by his former colleagues as he attempts to discover and shape his own true self by searching for justice for a young women murdered four years earlier.

The suspense arises from trying to make the connections between the four year old murder, the two police officers who were later gunned down, the missing two million dollars in bank money, the murder of an FBI agent, the role of Homeland Security, official corruption, and a money laundering operation. Author Connelly will surprise you at every twist and turn.

Rating:
Summary: Thought about giving it 4 Stars.
Review: When I realized that I was going to recommend this book to all of Conelly's fans, I changed the ranking from 4 to 5 stars. I think for anyone else it's still a 4 star book. Meaning there is a slight loss of Conelly's usual constant interest for the reader. But I noticed something very different about this one, it's entirely in first person and as I read it, I'm begining to understand who Conelly really is, he is one of the most creative people to have ever lived. The artificial need to continually feed the reader eye candy is put asunder here, this book is the one, and only one so in touch with human behavior. To explain that would be giving the theme away, you have to read the book for that, which is also real. I also suggest reading Mad Light, or SB 1 or God by Maddox.

Rating:
Summary: Bosch Adjusts to Retirement
Review: LOST LIGHT is a very satisfying story which captures the skill and humanity of main character Hieronymous Bosch as he begins his struggle with the boring reality of retirement from the high stress of being a detective in the Robbery/Homocide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Michael Connelly uses the familiar situation of a retired cop returning to an unsolved case and for the most part, is able to handle all the problems that over-used scenario presents. He cleverly maneuvers Bosch so he is able to interview important witnesses and gain access to vital files and records despite losing the power and authority of his badge. There are basically three crimes, intricately connected, with an underlying sense that someone in power doesn't want Bosch nosing around, let alone solving the cases.

In addition to battling to solve the crimes, Bosch contends with the depression of divorce and the memories of his ex-wife, Eleanor Wish. Throughout the story, Connelly meticulously gives depth to Bosch's character as he struggles with his feelings of loneliness and thoughts of aging while being hampered by unseen forces interfering with his efforts to tie the three crimes together. The surprise at the conclusion defines the "lost light" of the title and once again shows why Michael Connelly is one of the most popular and talented authors of crime fiction.

Tim Smith

Rating:
Summary: What it lacks in plot, it makes up for with Bosch!
Review: Harry Bosch, now officially retired, has time on his hands. But, he still feels the pull of the job, and knows deep down that finding justice for the dead is, for him, not just a job, but a life. And so, he begins to look into a four year old unsolved case that has fallen by the investigatorial wayside, the vicious murder of Angella Benton, a film production assistant, killer just a few days before a daring $2million robbery on a movie set. Bosch gradually uncovers new information, throwing the case into an entirely different light, and finds that, even though he's now left the LAPD, trouble still won't leave him alone...

This is a tremendously successful Bosch novel from Connelly, surely the finest American exponent of the gritty cop thriller. It's plot may not be entirely engrossing, but this book has so much in it about Bosch - no doubt helped by the fact that it's told in the first person - that that doesn't matter. Indeed, I don't think Connelly has ever dug quite so deep, or shined his light quite so far into the mysterious dark cavern that is Harry Bosch, which makes this book a real delight for all fans of the series. To be honest, I feel that this book is primarily about Bosch, Bosch and Bosch (oh, and maybe L.A. too), so if you want a novel with a strong plot, maybe pass this by just for now. Although, I'd certainly recommend Lost Light to all those who are already fans. But, as the plot isn't Connelly's best (even though it does turn into something quite special at the books fascinating climax) those looking to just try the series out, should probably try an earlier one.

It's fresh, it's very well written, it's engaging, and it even has another final page revelation to shock the reader, making this another gem among the treasure-trove that is Connelly's work.