THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY
Review by Philip Nutman
Over the course of 14 years and 17 novels, former Los Angeles Times crime reporter-turned international bestselling novelist Michael Connelly has staked a claim as the heir apparent to both Raymond Chandler and the late Ed McBain (the terrific writer Evan Hunter, who sadly passed away last year). Riffing off the lonely gumshoe and the police procedural, Connelly’s detective Harry Bosch is as quintessentially LA as Philip Marlowe and as urban and as police department-chained as McBain’s Steve Carella from the 87th Precinct novels. In his 12th Bosch book, ECHO PARK, Connelly paints a picture of a detective haunted by the ghost of a victim whose murder he’s never been able to solve, and in doing so spins a page-turner of a yarn that unfolds with his customary intelligence and deft plotting. For a devoted Connelly reader, the end result is both satisfying and familiar. Perhaps too familiar—and that’s starting to possibly become the trouble with Harry.
Echo Park
Michael Connelly
Little, Brown
If you’ve read the Bosch novels in order, starting with 1992’s THE BLACK ECHO, then you know the character and have grown with him. A former ward of state (his mother was murdered when we was a teenager) and a Vietnam veteran (Harry was a tunnel rat flushing out the VC), Bosch has spent virtually his entire adult life in the LAPD, which has become his surrogate, dysfunctional adoptive family (he quit at one point and did the private dick thing, only to return to the fold). Through the novels, readers have experienced his constant clashes with the police department brass, seen him struggle to give up smoking, fall in and out of love, get married, father a child and get divorced. The one constant in Harry’s life is his work as a detective, and Connelly, who knows his subject well—his depictions of the minutiae and drudgery of police life never fail to be interesting—takes Bosch to that place all detectives are cursed by: the cold case that won’t leave you alone.
The plot of ECHO PARK is slim, but the resonance lies in the title. “Cold” cases are the unsolved ones that tend to obsess a diligent detective, and with Harry now assigned to the Open–Unsolved Unit that’s what he’s doing on a daily basis. One case has shadowed him all these years: in 1993, a Marie Gesto vanished after a trip to a Hollywood supermarket. It was Harry’s case and the woman was never found, and one he has repeatedly returned to over the years, including the short time he spent away from the department as a private dick. Then, out of the blue, he gets a call from the DA—someone, convicted on other charges, is prepared to confess to the disappearance and subsequent murder of the still-missing Gesto. It all sounds so simple, but in a Connelly novel that’s never the case. In this incidence, many of the elements surrounding this situation trigger echoes in Harry’s mind—the fact both he and the serial killer who claims to have killed Gesto were raised in the same institution, both lived in the same neighborhood (Echo Park), and…well, that would be giving too much away. For a new reader, this would be a good jumping in point to the Bosch series.
The pleasure of a good whodunit is the interaction between reader and author; it’s a game of smoke and mirrors in which it’s the author’s responsibility to send the reader (usually in the company of the protagonist) down the wrong path—a game of misdirection so good that even if the reader, ahead of the protagonist/police detective/amateur sleuth, guesses whodunit, the writer should always surprise them with whytheydunnit. I don’t know if it’s just me, as a published novelist who loves a good mystery, or if I’ve become too familiar with Connelly’s work, but for the past five novels I’ve figured out whodunit by at least the middle of the novel—in the case of ECHO PARK, I pretty much had the whole plot figured out by page 50. However, while I should have seen the ending proper coming, I didn’t, which is testament to Connelly’s skills as a storyteller as he keeps you turning the page at breakneck speed. Like I said, maybe Harry, and therefore Connelly, are becoming too familiar. However, for this reader that’s a moot point: I’ll keep reading Michael Connelly for as long as he keeps writing, and I’ll especially keep reading Harry Bosch, who, by this stage in my life, feels like an old friend.
As an extra for us Bosch fans, Connelly is currently serializing a new Harry novella, THE OVERLOOK, in the New York Times Sunday magazine over the course of 16 weeks. As of 10/22, THE OVERLOOK was up to installment #6. To catch up, go to www.nytimes.com/funnypages. 
THE BOOK OF FATE
Review by Garrett Peck
Author Brad Meltzer, who has five previous New York Times bestsellers under his belt, is certain to hit the list again with his latest thriller, THE BOOK OF FATE. It combines two fascinating topics—the lives of former presidents and the influence of the secretive Freemasons on history—into a fast-paced page-turner fraught with suspense, surprises and a depth of characterization too often lacking in books of its type.
The protagonist is Wes Holloway, a presidential aide who has a good portion of his face destroyed during an assassination attempt on President Leland “The Lion” Manning during an appearance at the Pepsi 400 in Daytona. A photograph taken at the event appears to show Manning hiding behind the NASCAR CEO’s wife, when he was actually trying to pull her out of danger. Manning gets dubbed “The Cowardly Lion” and is defeated for reelection. This is the least of Wes’s problems. The ricochet he catches off the bulletproof limo causes facial scarring so bad children cringe away from him. Worse still, he is consumed with guilt over the death of Deputy Chief of Staff Ron Boyle, who he personally put into the president’s limo.
Eight years later, Wes still works for the former president. While most presidential aides would have moved on to bigger and better things, his scarring and psychological problems have makes that impossible for him. His world is turned upside down once again when he encounters the supposedly dead Boyle during a speaking engagement in Malaysia. He begins to realize something unknown went down on the day that altered his life forever. His conspiracy theorizing is validated when an FBI agent begins stalking him and the religiously motivated assassin escapes from his mental institution. Teaming up with his traffic-ticket attorney roommate and a gossip columnist determined to become a real journalist, he begins an investigation that leads him to clues involving a decade-old presidential crossword puzzle, mysterious facts buried in Masonic history and a code created by Thomas Jefferson.
Meltzer claims the seed for this novel grew from a surreal fan letter he received from former President George H. W. Bush. Meltzer asked Bush if he could come visit him to see what life after the White House was really like. This led to an obsession over what happens to someone who was once the most powerful man in the world but now had to stop at red lights like everyone else. He also visited with former President Bill Clinton. Many details in the book come from real life, such as the bronze fist of Abraham Lincoln that sits on the desk of Leland Manning in the novel, but actually sits on Bush’s desk. Also fascinated with the Freemasons—and how could you not be fascinated by a group whose past members included 12 U.S. presidents, Winston Churchill, John Wayne, Voltaire, Mozart and Houdini?—he studied the group for three years. He even asked the Masons if he could hold the launch party for THE BOOK OF FATE at their temple. At first they said no, thinking they would be depicted as negatively as Opus Dei was in Dan Brown’s THE DA VINCI CODE. After reading the galley Meltzer sent, they welcomed him instead. Meltzer’s research is meticulous, but more importantly, he knows how to incorporate it so that it serves his story rather than getting in the way.
“Six minutes from now,
one of us would be dead.
That was our fate.
None of us knew it would
be coming.”
If I were pitching this to a publisher or film studio, I would describe it as David Baldacci’s ABSOLUTE POWER meets THE DA VINCI CODE, but such an oversimplification does a disservice to the novel’s depth. Characterization is as important as plot, which is certainly not something you could say about THE DA VINCI CODE, whose symbologist protagonist is as much a cipher as the clues he puzzles over. Most of the book is written in first person from Wes’s point of view, which allows for a deeper emotional connection with the character. Those necessary scenes in which Wes does not appear are written in third person, and Meltzer succeeds in creating a different narrative voice for those chapters. He might not be a glittering stylist, but his prose is certainly smooth and reader-friendly enough to keep those pages turning.
At its core, THE BOOK OF FATE is a meditation on lives not lived to their full potential. Nearly every character has fallen short of the lofty goals they have set. Most of us have big dreams, but very few of us realize them. This book shows what desperate lengths people will go to in order to achieve the position in life they believe they deserve. If your life’s goal is to read an exciting thriller with both brains and heart, THE BOOK OF FATE won’t leave you unfulfilled.
