|
Looking for a quality of light in the forsaken city of angels
''Lost Light''
Buy it at Amazon.com in hardcover.
Reviewed by John Orr
The United States used to have a pretty good
system of rights and laws to protect its citizens from such inconviences as illegal search and
seizure.
Then came 9/11 and the ensuing panic of the Patriot Act, and now if you look cross-eyed at
a federal officer who's having a tummy ache you can be thrown in a holding cell to rot until
the Tums kicks in or till hell freezes over.
Civil rights and other groups are challenging the Patriot Act, but in the meantime leave it
to fiction to take up the good fight; specifically Michael Connelly, with his latest Harry
Bosch tale, ''Lost Light.''
Bosch, who threw down his badge and marched out of Parker Center at the end of ''City of
Bones,'' is still a cranky guy with a gun, but no badge … just a private-detective license.
He hasn't done much since quitting the L.A.P.D. other than drink red wine and stare at the
walls. But then he got a call from Lawton Cross, a detective who'd been paralyzed by what
seemed to be a random shooting a few years before.
Cross asks Bosch to look into an old case that has haunted both of them for years, because
neither had been able to solve it: the murder of Angella Benton.
Her body had been found in the vestibule of her apartment building on Fountain near La
Brea. She'd been strangled, but Bosch and his partner, Kizmin Rider, quickly deduced that
details of the crime scene … the exposed bosom, the puddle of semen … had been staged. But
then the robbery-homicide division took over the case, assigning Cross and detective Jack
Dorsey.
Dorsey was killed in the same incident that left Cross paralyzed. And the Benton case sat
in a file drawer.
Then Bosch starts asking around, including talking to Rider. But Rider, now an L.A.P.D.
bureaucrat, just warns Bosch to stay away.
When Bosch starts asking if Benton's death might have something to do with a huge pile of
money that disappeared from a movie lot not long after she died, the F.B.I. gets all cranky
and throws Bosch in a holding cell in that big building on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood,
along with suspected Muslim terrorists.
But, he doesn't just disappear forever, but gets out and continues the good fight, with the
help of an F.B.I. agent who has his own reasons for wanting Bosch to succeed. It's a thrilling
mystery full of action, and a large load of plot twists.
''Lost Light'' is a USDA Prime selection for the meaty Bosch series, and a treat for those
who were worried about what would happen to their hero after he quit the L.A.P.D.
Well, he's still out there, fighting the good fight in the land of smoggy sunsets and
martinis at Musso and Frank's Grill. |