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What I'm Reading

 Around twenty years ago, Michael Connelly was inspired by a news story involving the La Brea tar pits. Bones had emerged from the Earth; these were human, and they pointed toward a homicide. This was evidence of one of Earth's oldest homicides--if not the oldest on record.


Connelly imagined a story involving his main hero, Bosch. One day, a Los Angeles doctor is walking with his dog, and the dog unearths human bones; they're in a shallow grave. This is way up high in some hills; it would be an odd spot for a premeditated murder. And yet the bones also carry "scars" -- suggesting that the victim endured severe, prolonged, physical abuse. Additionally, these are, or were, the bones of a child.

It's soon clear that a convicted pedophile lives nearby. End of story? The former pedophile seems innocent, but he is a professional "set-dresser," he adds details to TV sets, to create a sense of verisimilitude, and he has in his possession a child's skateboard. Is that for a set, or is it a "trophy," from a murder?

Almost any Bosch novel has many virtues. One is brilliant plotting; "City of Bones" does amazing things with an ambiguous set of initials ("AD"), a generic family name ("the Fosters"), and a taped exchange between a cop and a journalist. A second virtue is the haunting characters; "City of Bones" has a "Greek tragedy" subplot, and I won't forget Connelly's use of Medea/Jason-of-the-Argonauts material. The final thing I like is a quality in almost any good detective novel -- the pleasure of seeing someone smart who works at a problem, and works at it, until some kind of solution emerges. It's weirdly comforting to travel with Bosch to the many awful places he must visit in any work day.

Till next time.

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