BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
(Print: 11/26/2012; 9780316069434; Little, Brown and Company; 403 pages.)
Audio: 1/15/2013; Hachette Book Group; 9781619695603; Duration 10:30:16; 9 parts.
(Feature Film: No, but it might sort of be incorporated into the tv series.)

Series: Harry Bosch, Book 16 (25th novel by the author)

Main characters:
Harry Bosch-LAPD homicide detective.
David Chu- LAPD Homicide detective-Bosch’s partner.
Madeline "Maddie" Bosch-Harry’s daughter
Hannah Stone-love interest
Nancy Mendenhall-IAD Investigator

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
Harry and his partner, David Chu, catch a cold case that began as his when Jerry Edgar was his partner 20 years ago, during the L. A. Riots. It was taken from them at the time because of the overload of cases caused by the riots. But was this one of those? What was this blond beauty doing at night, in the middle of gang territory? And now that a few clues are coming to light, Harry’s caught, once again, in politics when his superiors ask him to step back from the case. How would it look if the only crime being solved from the riots was the murder of a white woman?

AUTHOR:
Michael Connelly (7/21/56). According to Wikipedia, in 2012, with this book Connelly won “the world's most lucrative crime fiction award, the RBA Prize for Crime Writing worth €125,000.”

NARRATOR:
Michael McConnohie. According to Wikipedia, Michael “is an American voice actor, writer and director who has provided many voice roles in movies, anime, and video games. He and fellow actress Melodee Spevack run a production company called VoxWorks.”
I didn’t recognize any of the titles of his credits, but then I don’t play video games. His narration here was great.

GENRE:
Thriller, fiction

LOCATIONS:
Los Angeles, Kuwait

SUBJECTS:
War correspondents, L. A. riots, 1992, military, politics, ballistics, police procedure.

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter 1: “Snow White 1992”
“A guardsman with sergeant stripes came to the door and leaned down to look at the car’s occupants.
‘Sergeant Burstin, San Luis Obispo. What can I do for you fellows?’
‘Homicide,’ Robleto said. He hooked a thumb toward Bosch and Edgar in the back.
Burstin straightened up and made an arm motion so that a path could be cleared and they could be let through.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘She’s in the alley on the east side between Sixty-sixth and Sixty-seventh Street. Go on through and my guys will show you. We’ll form a tight perimeter and watch rooflines. We’ve had unconfirmed reports of sniper fire in the neighborhood.’
Robleto put his window back up as he drove through.
‘My guys,’ he said, mimicking Burstin’s voice. ‘That guy’s probably a schoolteacher or something back in the real world. I heard that none of these guys they brought in are even from L.A. From all around the state but not L.A. Probably couldn’t find Leimert Park with a map.’
‘Two years ago, neither could you, dude,’ Delwyn said.
‘Whatever. The guy doesn’t know shit about this place and now he’s all like take charge? Fucking weekend warrior. All I’m saying is we didn’t need these guys. Makes us look bad. Like we couldn’t handle it and had to bring in the pros from San Luis O-fucking-bispo.’
Edgar cleared his throat and spoke from the backseat.
‘I got news for you,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t handle it and we couldn’t look any worse than we already did Wednesday night. We sat back and let the city burn, man. You see all that shit on TV? The thing you didn’t see was any of us on the ground kicking ass. So don’t be blaming the schoolteachers from ‘Bispo. It’s on us, man.’
‘Whatever,’ Robleto said.
‘Says ‘Protect and Serve’ on the side a the car,’ Edgar added. ‘We didn’t do much of either.’
Bosch remained silent. Not that he disagreed with his partner. The department had embarrassed itself with its feeble response to the initial breakout of violence. But Harry wasn’t thinking about that. He had been struck by what the sergeant had said about the victim being a she. It was the first mention of that, and as far as Bosch knew, there hadn’t been any female murder victims so far. This wasn’t to say that women weren’t involved in the violence that had raked the city. Looting and burning were equal-opportunity endeavers. Bosch had seen women engaged in both. The night before, he’d been on riot control on Hollywood Boulevard and had witnessed the looting of Frederick’s, the famous lingerie store. Half the looters had been women.
But the sergeant’s report had given him pause nonetheless. A woman had been out here in the chaos and it had cost her her life.”

RATING:
I gave this book 5 stars. This was a particularly captivating episode. ( )

I received my copy of THE BLACK BOX by Michael Connolly yesterday afternoon. I had a lot of things I had to do today. Instead, I started the book and could not do anything else until I finished it.
It opens in 1992. South Central Los Angeles was in the midst of a riot following the not guilty verdicts for four LAPD officers accused of excessively beating a Black man following a car chase. The police department was severely under manned and National Guardsmen are trying to control the mobs.
Harry Bosch was assigned to investigate a homicide in the neighborhood. The victim was Anneke Jespersen, a Danish journalist who had been placed against the wall and shot in the head. There were no witnesses. Bosch was assigned to investigate, but was not given enough time to complete his job because of everything else going on. It bothered him a lot and the case ended up among other unsolved murders.
Twenty years later the department is trying to clear unsolved murders. Since he was involved at the beginning, Harry wanted to work on this case. The lieutenant in charge was focused on reducing the number of cases. In other words, if there’s not an instant resolution, he wanted the staff to move onto other ones. Of course, Bosch was more focused on completing the mission.
By then Police Department had more tools available than it had in 1992. The first evidence he found was a bullet. It turned out it had been used in another unsolved case. Bosch wanted to know its history, where it came from and where else it had been used.
He wanted to know why Jespersen, a white woman, was in the area during the riot. He wanted to find the gun. He wanted to find out where some items she should have had were. And he wanted to find out the motive for her murder.
His search took him in many directions and he had help from several sources, some within the department, and some from outside.
All of Connell’s books have well-developed plots and characters unexpected twists. This is one of his best. I did figure out the motive for the murder partway through seeing how it was resolved kept me going. ( )

Another series I started at the end :) First time I heard about Hyeronimus "Harry" Bosch was when friend of mine said there is a great TV show that I should check out. Needless to say I am still to begin with watching it but what I noticed right away was that this TV show was based on a very successful series of novels.

So I picked up first one I could find, "The Black Box".

This is very slow burning novel. After getting involved in a rush investigation of a murder of news reporter during the LA riots in 1992 Bosch finally gets the chance to solve the case 20 years later when assigned to the cold-case squad.

As I said story is a slow at the beginning but again this is what I would expect from investigation of the old case. Scant evidence collected during the street riots, witnesses no longer alive .... all of this frustrates our protagonist who also needs to fight the internal police bureaucracy intent to send him to retirement as soon as possible. I have to say final twist was a surprise but again causes for so many atrocities are usually very simple and base.

Bosch comes to me like a mix between Lucas Davenport and Jack Reacher. He has that sense of justice and is merciless to killers and criminals (scene where he insists his partner writes down the letter for parole hearings of hard criminals paints a picture of a man who does not trust that sentenced criminals can change or repent in any way). Unlike Davenport though he is not setting the criminals up explicitly but sure managers to manipulate them into position from which they can only surrender or die in a gunfight.

All in all good novel. According to the comments and reviews this one seems to be one of the slower books in the series so this makes me feel very good :) more interesting books to read in the future.

Recommended to fans of the crime and police novels. ( )

I'm definitely a Harry Bosch fan, but this was the worst so far for me. it went nowhere as a story and did not develop any of the characters. ( )

I wasn't a huge fan of the end but I still liked the book. ( )