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 The great American novelist Michael Connelly is also a book critic; he has written beautifully about the noir master James M. Cain.   https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/books/review/the-cocktail-waitress-by-james-m-cain.html


Cain created "Double Indemnity," a story about evil and seduction. Its villain, Phyllis, is charismatic, beautiful, persuasive, and soulless; she is like a new version of the Wicked Queen, from "Snow White."

I think Connelly had Phyllis in mind when he wrote his crime novel, "The Closers," because that particular book has a duplicitous villain for the ages.

"The Closers" was a kind of comeback for Connelly; he had strayed from the standard police procedural, and, with "The Closers," he returned to form. The story has Connelly's main hero, Bosch, exiting retirement to look at a cold case. Years ago, a secretly pregnant biracial girl was murdered. The gun has a "tattoo"; it has skin from the alleged murderer. New DNA testing can lead to answers -- or it can lead to *apparent* answers.

Connelly invents wonderful characters; in addition to the Wicked Queen, "The Closers" has a mourning father who fights drug addiction by working at a homeless shelter. There is a grief-stricken mother who preserves her dead girl's bedroom "in amber." The book has "Proud Boys" with eight-eight scribbled on their bodies; the eight-eight is meant to invoke thoughts of HH, or "Heil Hitler." Finally, there is an apparently upstanding chief detective who may have ruined several civilians' lives by assisting with a cover-up.

I think Connelly is just insanely talented. I loved escaping into his mysterious Los Angeles; it's clear he has fun, and I think the reader can't help but have (additional) fun while he is lost in a Bosch adventure.
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