Saturday, February 18, 2012

THE DROP: MICHAEL CONNELLY


A typical thriller by Michael Connelly though this time he returns to his old stand by, Harry Bosch, now in his sixties, facing 'the drop', the last few years of his career.  He is a widower, with a teenage daughter and he's intense as ever in solving cold cases.  This time it involves the death of the son of a nemesis, Irving Irving, disgraced cop turned councilman.  He, of course, hates Harry but asks for him to be put on this case.  Simultaneously, Harry is looking back at an early case, where a young woman was raped and killed back in 1984.  The DNA leads him to a suspect, who just happened to be eight years old when the murder took place.  Harry ends up finding the kid, also a rapist but he remembers living with a man, his mother's lover, who beat and abused him when he was a child.  This is the lead Harry needs, of course, and he solves both cases, the first not necessarily to satisfaction of the councilman, as he sees it as the usual city politics.  In the second case,  Harry discovers the murder of this young woman is also a serial killer, with 37 notches on his belt, living in disguise as his deceased father. Bizarre.

Harry also discovers a friend, a older woman who works with 'returning pedophiles,' and they end up having a relationship when Harry proves to her he has some sympathy for these people, raising the nature/nurture question.  A quick read, fun, with the usual wham bam thank you Michael ending.

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