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Crimes and Misdemeanors

About Michael Connelly's classic novel, "The Last Coyote":

On paid leave, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch decides to open an investigation into his mother's murder, to pass the time. He misses his mother; this woman worked as a prostitute and wanted to win, for her son, a better life. (The name "Bosch" is invented, and it has to do with our hero's admiration for the paintings of *another* Bosch....the way the many creatures in the "Garden of Earthly Delights" bring to mind colorful characters from Southern California.)

Trying to determine who killed his mother, Bosch meets: a possibly-shady former cop, a damaged painter who may be suicidal, a talkative fellow in a nursing home, a tough, outspoken reporter. The case twists and turns, and Bosch almost continuously lies, in big and small ways, to get what he wants. He endangers his own life and the lives of others, and we're still just talking about the first half of the book.

Sally Rooney said in the NYT that it helps to fall in love with a protagonist, if you're working your way through a novel. It's so easy to love Bosch--flawed, idealistic, struggling, smart, compassionate. And his world is so different from other "crime fiction" worlds. Even an encounter with a bureaucrat, a discussion about chair placement, can become a mesmerizing power struggle. You get the sense, also, that the writer, Michael Connelly, is constantly collecting bizarre real-world stories to add to his work. I especially like when a guy tries to steal an airbag and ends up dead (the airbag drives a screwdriver through the thief's heart)--and, through an investigation of the theft, the LAPD discovers that the car-owner's DNA just happens to line up with a cold case, a murder, from another state.

(This is a score for the LAPD, because it means listing two murders "solved," without adding any unsolved new murders to the docket. The press likes this.)

Many thriller writers rely on gimmicks--shifting points of view, flashbacks, italicized passages--and Michael Connelly doesn't  need any of that. He uses meat-and-potatoes storytelling. One event after another, seen from Bosch's perspective. The writing seems effortless.

This isn't Dostoyevsky, but I loved "The Last Coyote." What a satisfying thriller.
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