The Burning Room by Michael Connelly

The maverick Los Angeles Police Department homicide Detective Harry Bosch has come a long way since he first made his appearance in the 1992 detective mystery thriller, The Black Echo. In that premier book of the series a man found in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam was just another statistic for the police department. But when Harry Bosch stepped in it became personal because the murdered man was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who had fought side by side with him in a hellish underground war.

Twenty-two years later in his nineteenth avatar in Edgar-winner Michael Connelly’s superbly crafted The Burning Room, Harry Bosch and his new partner, rookie Detective Lucia Soto, are tasked with an unenviable job of solving a very old case with a lot of twists and impediments. It concerns a case which begins almost ten years earlier with the drive-by shooting of Orlando Merced as he played with his band in Los Angeles's Mariachi Plaza. The bullet that struck him in the spine caused grievous damage leaving him paralyzed.

When Bosch and Lucy get to work they are confronted with lack of evidence which make the investigation all the more difficult. They got a vital lead when an anonymous tipster informed Detective Lucia Soto that the shooting of Orlando Merced is connected to the 1993 devastating fire which took place at the Bonnie Brae apartments that killed nine victims, mostly children. Incidentally, Soto could have been one of the children consumed by that raging fire twenty years ago but survived while some of his friends didn’t. The mariachi musician was a victim of a conspiracy to bury the truth behind the arson as he was believed to have known the people involved. Bosch and Lucy also unearthed connections between the two incidents with the robbery of an EZ Bank.

With powerful people coming into the picture, master storyteller Michael Connelly skillfully maneuvered this compelling police procedural with a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Juggling between suspense, crime and mystery, there is no dull moment as Harry Bosch just simply refused to fade into oblivion and reinvented himself through the deft handling of his character by Connelly. Beautifully written and wonderfully paced, The Burning Room is not only for die-hard fans of the series but also for new readers who want to explore the world of Harry Bosch.

AMAZON BUY LINK

PERILOUSLY CLOSER TO THE FRINGE SIDE OF THE LAW!

The Crossing is what every fan of author Michael Connelly wants – to see his two most formidable characters together again. If memory serves me right, it was The Brass Verdict (2008) which brought Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, and LAPD Detective Harry Bosch together. It was followed up with The Reversal (2010) as defense attorney Mickey Haller changes sides to prosecute the high-profile retrial of a child murderer, with LAPD Detective Bosch as lead investigator. In The Crossing, the two teams yet again but Harry Bosch is no longer a detective of LAPD, rather he is living perilously closer to the fringe side of the law.

Harry Bosch had worked almost all his adult life pulling up crime suspects and putting them behind bar until his suspension resulted in early retirement. His half-brother Mickey Haller, who is a defense attorney, worked relentlessly to get crime suspects freed. It’s not difficult to understand that they don’t see eye to eye. But when Mickey Haller’s investigator Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski is put out of action by a hit-and-run incident, he approaches Bosch to find evidences to back up the claim of his client Da’Quan "DQ" Foster against whom the LAPD has watertight evidence. DQ has been accused of the murder of Lexi Parks in her home.

His foray into the other side of the law, the premise of which inspired the title of the book, though initially marked by reluctance and guilt, soon opened his eyes. With the help of his former LAPD partner, Lucia Soto, Bosch uncovered a well-connected and thriving racket of prostitution and pornography, and cops gone rogue. As the plot thickens, it builds up to a crescendo as the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall into place. The Crossing by Michael Connelly has everything that you’d expect from the master storyteller. What makes this new Bosch novel different from the earlier ones is the difficult “crossing” that he has to make, the judgment that determines his decision and actions not as a cop but as a person outside of the law. Riveting and mesmerizing from start to finish, The Crossing opens a new chapter for Harry Bosch as well as author Michael Connelly.

AMAZON BUY LINK

The Burning Room by Michael Connelly

The maverick Los Angeles Police Department homicide Detective Harry Bosch has come a long way since he first made his appearance in the 1992 detective mystery thriller, The Black Echo. In that premier book of the series a man found in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam was just another statistic for the police department. But when Harry Bosch stepped in it became personal because the murdered man was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who had fought side by side with him in a hellish underground war.

Twenty-two years later in his nineteenth avatar in Edgar-winner Michael Connelly’s superbly crafted The Burning Room, Harry Bosch and his new partner, rookie Detective Lucia Soto, are tasked with an unenviable job of solving a very old case with a lot of twists and impediments. It concerns a case which begins almost ten years earlier with the drive-by shooting of Orlando Merced as he played with his band in Los Angeles's Mariachi Plaza. The bullet that struck him in the spine caused grievous damage leaving him paralyzed.

When Bosch and Lucy get to work they are confronted with lack of evidence which make the investigation all the more difficult. They got a vital lead when an anonymous tipster informed Detective Lucia Soto that the shooting of Orlando Merced is connected to the 1993 devastating fire which took place at the Bonnie Brae apartments that killed nine victims, mostly children. Incidentally, Soto could have been one of the children consumed by that raging fire twenty years ago but survived while some of his friends didn’t. The mariachi musician was a victim of a conspiracy to bury the truth behind the arson as he was believed to have known the people involved. Bosch and Lucy also unearthed connections between the two incidents with the robbery of an EZ Bank.

With powerful people coming into the picture, master storyteller Michael Connelly skillfully maneuvered this compelling police procedural with a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Juggling between suspense, crime and mystery, there is no dull moment as Harry Bosch just simply refused to fade into oblivion and reinvented himself through the deft handling of his character by Connelly. Beautifully written and wonderfully paced, The Burning Room is not only for die-hard fans of the series but also for new readers who want to explore the world of Harry Bosch.