The 1993 kidnap/murder of Marie Gesto is the cold case that
haunts LAPD detective Harry Bosch. The one he can't let go.
Harry keeps the 13-year-old file on his desk and goes back
to it whenever he has free time. Harry has always had
a "doer" in mind: the spoiled rich son of a wealthy oil
man. But there was never any direct evidence linking Jr. to
the case; only Harry's intuition that the guy was good for
it. Not even Harry is right all the time and this seems to
be one of those times.
A break in the case comes when a man unknown to the police,
Raynard Waits, is arrested for two horrific killings. Waits
makes a deal to confess to a number of other unsolved
murders, including Gesto, if the DA takes the death penalty
off the table. Harry is suspicious, but part of the deal is
the suspect has to prove his guilt by taking investigators
to Gesto's body -- which he does. Slam dunk, case closed.
Right...come on, if it were that easy, Barney Fife could have
solved it. When Hieronymus Bosch is involved in a case,
complications are bound to turn up. Harry can't argue with
the fact that Waits took them to Gesto's remains, a spot no
one would have known but her killer: Harry's still uneasy.
Gesto just doesn't fit Wait's M.O. However, the D.A., who
is currently in the middle of an election, is happy and it
looks like the deal will happen.
Not so fast, folks. Waits manages to escape custody, kill
two officers, wound Harry's partner and head to parts
unknown, leaving everyone involved, Harry included, with
egg on their faces. Soon after, another woman is kidnapped
and the press and public are screaming for blood. Harry
knows the killer keeps his victims alive for some time
before butchering them. Now it's a race against time while
Harry runs the crafty Waits to ground before his latest
victim is dispatched.
However, it seems that not everyone involved wants to see
justice served. Harry realizes quickly that there's a fox
in his henhouse. Now he's flying under the radar all the
way in a race against time to bring a killer to justice and
untangle a web of corruption that will take him all the way
through the department and up to the higher echelons of
city politics.
Harry Bosch has had a long and illustrious career. I sort
of knew that. As a bookseller, I certainly knew that
Michael Connelly is a hugely popular writer with
readers and critics alike. I'd just never gotten around to
reading him. All my friends warned me that there were close
to a dozen Harry Bosch books before this one (actually, I
think this one is #12) and I'd be totally lost. Hmm, either
I'm quite the brilliant reader or Connelly is quite the
brilliant author, because I felt right at home from the
very first sentence of the prologue. I'm fairly sure the
kudos go to Connelly. Harry may have quite a back-story,
but I was never lost or wondering what I had missed. I
didn't feel, as a reader, that I missed a thing. The story
grabs you from the first and although some of it is
predictable (the lot of all mysteries), some of the pieces
were more elusive and only fell into place at the end with
the reveal. An addictive and satisfying read.
Detective Harry Bosch reopens one of his own unsolved cases and comes face to face with a psychotic killer he has been seeking for years. In 1995 Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket. Harry Bosch worked the case but couldn't crack it, and the 22-year-old woman was never found.
Now Bosch is in the Open-Unsolved Unit, where he still keeps the Gesto file on his desk, when the DA calls. A man accused of two heinous killings is willing to come clean about several others, including the murder of Marie Gesto. Bosch must now take the confession of the man he has sought- -and hated--for eleven years. But when Bosch learns that he and his partner missed a clue back in 1995 that could have led them to Gesto's killer--and stopped nine murders that followed--his whole being as a cop begins to crack.
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