Angels Flight

In his compelling Harry Bosch novels, Connelly typically puts the onetime Vietnam tunnel rat turned LAPD detective into one tight spot after another. Here Harry is assigned to investigate a murder that threatens to set the city ablaze. African American attorney Howard Elias, who has become rich and famous suing LAPD for brutality, is murdered on the eve of his biggest case. Thousands of cops are likely suspects, and with the memory of the Rodney King incident fresh, police brass are looking for any kind of spin control they can find. Harry, last seen in the outstanding Trunk Music (1996), is promptly saddled with "assistance" from the Internal Affairs Division, the FBI, and LAPD's independently appointed inspector general, who Bosch soon learns was Elias' lover. To torque up the pressures as Bosch doggedly sorts red herrings and pursues the killer, Connelly has Harry's year-old marriage unraveling while he's trying to quit smoking. Two-thirds of the way through the book, the focus of the investigation changes to a celebrated child murder case and rich and powerful Internet pedophiles. Connelly makes all the necessary connections, but Bosch fans may feel that the author works too hard to create the tightest rat hole yet. Even so, Connelly at less than his best still merits attention. --Thomas Gaughan

Connelly's novel follows series hero Harry Bosch's investigation into the murder of an African-American defense attorney who made a career of courtroom victories at the expense of the Los Angeles Police Department. This installment in the series is especially dark, and narrator Peter Giles's reads in a voice that echoes with the dry croaking of a lifelong smoker-something that establishes a noirlike mood from the get-go. The narrator ably matches Bosch's downbeat mood, shifting from anger at having to deal with racism, not just in his city but within the ranks of the LAPD, to weariness, sadness, and frustration at his inability to stop the disintegration of his marriage. Giles sands some of the roughness from his voice and pitches it slightly higher for the book's female characters, like the detective's soon-to-be-separated wife and his partner, Kiz Rider. But there's still an edge rough enough to remind us we're not listening to an Agatha Christie cozy. A Grand Central paperback. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

A lawyer prominent for filing lawsuits against the Los Angeles Police Department that charge brutality and racism in its treatment of African Americans is murdered, and it is up to detective Harry Bosch to conduct an investigation that will seem fair to all sides. He uncovers an unusually tangled web of crime and corruption reminiscent of the complexity seen in James Ellroy's fiction. Connelly's (Blood Work, Audio Reviews, LJ 7/98) story is fascinating as a police procedural, a psychological portrait of the memorable Bosch, and a morality tale about the ways legal, political, and social forces can create unintentional conspiracies. In the end, most of the perpetrators are punished, though in unexpected ways, leaving only Bosch with the painful burden of the truth. Smoothly read by Dick Hill, Angels Flight is immensely satisfying as both a mystery and as serious literary fiction. Highly recommended for all collections.ÄMichael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The murder of a high-profile civil rights lawyer is just the trigger for another far-ranging case for L.A. cop Harry Bosch (Trunk Music, 1997, etc.). Howard Elias was widely known as the man who made a good living by suing the LAPD. So now that he's been shot, along with inoffensive cleaning woman Catalina Perez, aboard an otherwise empty inclined railway car, cops all over the city are cheering. What's not to like? wonders Bosch. Only two things: the likelihood that Elias was helped to his grave by one of the hundreds of officers now toasting his death, and the certainty that the public will scream coverup and react in riotous fury if Bosch turns up anybody but a fellow cop as a suspect. Under pressure to satisfy Deputy Chief Irvin Irving, who's determined to put his own Rainbow Coalition p.r. spin on every development, and to work peacefully with the Internal Affairs officers he's been saddled with, Bosch soon focuses on Elias's latest client: Michael Harris, the scruffy suspect who maintains that his confession in the murder of pre-teen Stacey Kincaid had been beaten out of him by cops who jumped on their first slim lead that came their way. But even as Bosch is turning up evidence that indicates Harris might be innocent after allŽmany sordid, though unsurprising, revelations hereŽthe net is closing around his former partner Frankie Sheehan, a Robbery-Homicide detective on the Harris case who'd already caught the eye of Internal Affairs when he killed a suspect in an earlier case. Bosch sweats to exonerate his old friend and find a substitute killer, but Deputy Chief Irving, who can't forget O.J. and Rodney King, is just not that interested in getting Sheehan off the hook. Reliable suspense on a grand scale, though the halfhearted attention to the suspects and Harry's perfunctory domestic troubles, as well as the lack of a powerfully mysterious center, make this the most routine of Connelly's eight world-class thrillers. (Author tour)

In his compelling Harry Bosch novels, Connelly typically puts the onetime Vietnam tunnel rat turned LAPD detective into one tight spot after another. Here Harry is assigned to investigate a murder that threatens to set the city ablaze. African American attorney Howard Elias, who has become rich and famous suing LAPD for brutality, is murdered on the eve of his biggest case. Thousands of cops are likely suspects, and with the memory of the Rodney King incident fresh, police brass are looking for any kind of spin control they can find. Harry, last seen in the outstanding Trunk Music (1996), is promptly saddled with "assistance" from the Internal Affairs Division, the FBI, and LAPD's independently appointed inspector general, who Bosch soon learns was Elias' lover. To torque up the pressures as Bosch doggedly sorts red herrings and pursues the killer, Connelly has Harry's year-old marriage unraveling while he's trying to quit smoking. Two-thirds of the way through the book, the focus of the investigation changes to a celebrated child murder case and rich and powerful Internet pedophiles. Connelly makes all the necessary connections, but Bosch fans may feel that the author works too hard to create the tightest rat hole yet. Even so, Connelly at less than his best still merits attention. ((Reviewed October 15, 1998)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

A black lawyer famed for his antidiscrimination suits against the LAPD is murdered before a big trial, and guess who gets to investigate? Connelly's hotshot Harry Bosch, of course. Copyright 1998 Library Journal Reviews

After taking a hiatus with his best-selling Blood Work (LJ 3/15/98), Connelly brings back hard-boiled LAPD detective Harry Bosch in another gripping police procedural. This time Harry and trusty partners Jerry Edgar and Kiz Rider are investigating the murder of Howard Elias, a high-profile black lawyer famous for suing L.A. police officers for racism and civil rights violations. The logical suspect? One of Elias's many LAPD defendants, of course, making for a touchy political situation in racially charged Los Angeles. As usual, Harry's investigation takes him to unexpected and dangerous places that his superiors don't like and warn him to avoid, but he forges ahead anyway. Can Harry find his way through the maze of this taut thriller? Angels Flight explores the underbelly of the human soul with the usual tight prose and swirling plot twists that Connelly's legions of fans have come to expect. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/98.] Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet Lib., Hammond, IN Copyright 1998 Library Journal Reviews

Hollywood homicide detective Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch (Trunk Music, 1996, etc.) is up to his very stiff neck in politics, police corruption and racial tension. The echo of the Rodney King case is almost deafening when Howard Elias, an African American lawyer famous for suing the LAPD for racially motivated brutality, is shot dead on the short train run up a steep hill in downtown L.A. known as Angels Flight. Bosch and his team a black woman named Kizmin Rider and a black man named Jerry Edgar are assigned the highly sensitive case. Although Bosch sniffs racial and departmental political hokum among the brass, he doggedly focuses on finding the killer, knowing that cops will be among the suspects. It all smells even worse when Bosch discovers signs of evidence tampering by the first cops on the crime scene and learns that the civilian attorney assigned to oversee the investigation had personal ties to Elias. A bit of a cowboy anyway, Bosch is even more ornery than usual, since his wife has gone AWOL and returned to gambling. Further hampered by a secretive and even obstructive departmental leadership and by his former partner's apparent links to the crime, Bosch moves well outside the rules to discover the ugly motivation for the killing. Connelly has all the hard-boiled procedural moves down and gives Bosch a reckless crusader's moral code. The finale, set against riots, delivers a brutal, anti-establishment sort of justice. This isn't Connelly's best; the plot is sufficiently ornate to diffuse tension, and Bosch seems to be evolving from the true character of early books into a sort of icon, a Dirty Harry for our times. Simultaneous Time Warner audio; author tour. (Jan.) Copyright 1998 Publishers Weekly Reviews