NY: Little, Brown, 2006.
Retirement didn’t sit too well with Harry Bosch, ex-LAPD homicide detective, and after two years of combining his pension with occasional private investigations, he’s thrown up his hands and come back to the force, working cold cases in the Open-Unsolved Unit. And he’s paired with one of his old partners from his previous life who is everything he’s not — young, black, female, gay, and computer-literate.
One of the cases Harry goes back to whenever he has a moment is one of his own unsolved homicides, the disappearance of a young woman from the parking lot of a riding stable where she exchanged mucking-out labor for riding time. There was a suspect he liked, but he’s never come up with a single bit of evidence. Then, quite accidentally, a couple of patrolmen stop a man in a van and discover a couple of bags filled with body parts. They weren’t looking for him, didn’t even know of his existence, so it seems like gravy. Then, to escape the death penalty, the suspect offers to confess, with details, to nine other murders — again, crimes the police weren’t even aware had been committed — and one of them is Harry’s unsolved case. He deals himself in on the interrogation, and on the first “field trip” to uncover a body. And then everything hits the fan and the admitted serial killer is at large again. Harry is not having a good week. That’s not even to mention the political side of things. This is one of the author’s better efforts among his recent output, with Harry making mistakes and misjudgments, feeling guilty about how he has handled things, and even hooking up again with Special Agent Rachel Walling. The plot holds together nicely and the final resolution is one you won’t see coming. (Or at least I didn’t.)
