Liars and Saints

 Several journeys occur in the final season of "Bosch." One of my favorites involves Grace Billets. Grace, a smart, hard-working cop, becomes impatient during a meeting. She dresses down an underling. In the world of "Bosch," even one intemperate remark can be disastrous. And so the underling begins a bullying campaign; he writes "DYKE SLUT" on Grace's car, but he writes it with white shoe polish, so Grace can conclude that she is examining the work of a cop. The underling then harasses Grace's girlfriend with a B.S. traffic stop. (The writers point out that cops are only human; in another scene, a cop who clearly *is* guilty of DWI.....gets waved away....no problem....) In "Bosch," the moment you know your boss wants your blood spilled is the moment he says: "We take your complaint very, very seriously." The boss stages a kind of theft--it's like when Joseph deliberately makes his brother, Benjamin, seem guilty of pocketing...

Det. Harry Bosch lives in LA; he has a fabulous hillside home, because one of his cases became a movie, "The Black Echo," and the proceeds were generous. (What is a black echo? That's a joke the writers choose not to explain. Novelist Michael Connelly actually has written a Bosch tale called "The Black Echo," as well as "The Black Box," "The Black Ice.") Bosch is a good cop who sometimes cuts a few corners, nothing major. He believes that "each soul counts," because, if that's not true, then *no* soul counts. He is the "tough, silent type"; he tells his daughter's nervous boyfriend that awkwardness-with-small-talk is a sign of good character. In any season of "Bosch," there is a range of plots and even genres, from slightly absurd "24" melodrama territory to quiet Raymond Carver-ish domestic skits. This is what I love. In the current season, for example, there is some monkey busines...