DWD's Reviews

Published in October of 2024 by Little, Brown, and Company. Read by Christine Lakin, Titus Welliver, and Madison Lintz. Duration: 10 hours, 50 minutes. Unabridged. LAPD Detective Harry Bosch first showed up in a novel in 1992. The Waiting is the 25th book in the series, but he has appeared in more than 30 books and short stories. Bosch is aging. He has aged right along with the series. He would be about 74 years old in this book and he is no longer the detective that goes out and finds the bad guys, but he does contribute from time to time. His protégé Renee Ballard is in charge of the cold case unit of LAPD.  Her unit is almost entirely made up of volunteers and they go through unsolved serious crimes and see if modern technology (like DNA comparison) can help to solve them. This book is mostly a Ballard novel, but Bosch does play a critical role in one of the three mysteries that are dealt with in this novel. I have a feeling that the "Bosch" in the Ballard and Bosch books...

  Published in November of 2023 by Little, Brown and Company. Read by Peter Giles, Titus Welliver, and Christine Lakin. Duration: 10 hours, 30 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: The seventh book in the Lincoln Lawyer series is also a crossover with the more prolific Harry Bosch series.  Mickey Haller is known as "the Lincoln Lawyer" because, at one point, he didn't actually have an office and he used the backseat of a Lincoln automobile as his office while he rode through LA's infamous traffic. Haller is a high profile defense attorney known for his antics and willingness to make any argument for the defense. But, lately, Haller has started his own version of the Innocence Project - he is looking for cases of truly innocent people who were mistakenly convicted. Harry Bosch is Haller's older half brother (by 15 years.) Bosch is a retired LAPD detective and has always looked at defense attorneys as slimy characters that use tricks to get the guilty people that he arres...

  Published in November of 2022. Read by Titus Welliver, Christine Lakin, and Peter Giles. Duration: 9 hours, 37 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: The latest Harry Bosch novel has Bosch returning to work with LAPD as a retired volunteer. Renee Ballard was offered a chance to "write her own ticket" because of her work (and very ugly internal politics) in the last novel. With the help of a sponsor on the city council, she re-established the cold case unit. It has a shoestring of budget and she is the only full time officer in the unit. Everyone else is a volunteer with different skills - a former prosecutor who helps with search warrants, a former FBI field agent, an expert in making family connections with DNA results, an officer who retired early due to health reasons are part of the team. But, Ballard's biggest catch for the team is her sometime unofficial partner - retired LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch. Bosch may be old (70+) but he is up on the current technology an...

Published in 2014 by Hachette Audio. Read by Len Cariou. Duration: 50 minutes. Unabridged. This short story was the closest thing to a straight out police procedural that I have read from Michael Connelly. By that, I mean that although Harry Bosch is the main character in this story, it really is just the story of how a police officer reviews a cold case and figures out who the bad guy is based on one new clue. Any police officer could have been the main character because Harry Bosch was just sort of along for the ride. Len Cariou read the book. Cariou used to read a lot of Connelly's books. Now The narrator, Len Cariou, at the dinner table on his TV show. Cariou is best known as the grandfather on the TV show Blue Bloods and I kept imagining that he was reading it to me at the dinner table from the TV show, which kind of ruined the mood of the story (not that it was much of a story). I rate this short story 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Switchblade ...

Published by Hachette Audio in October of 2019. Read by Titus Welliver and Christine Lakin. Duration: 10 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Michael Connelly has been publishing Harry Bosch since 1992. Harry Bosch started as a grumpy older detective and Connelly has decided to let him age (unlike, say, James Bond who has been basically the same age for almost 60 years). Bosch is now 70 years old and is long past being a LAPD police detective.  The author, Michael Connelly But, he's still on the hunt. Renee Ballard is a police detective who has been relegated to "the late show" - better known as the nighttime Hollywood beat. It's a world of homeless camps, prostitutes, food trucks and party people going to and from the latest clubs. It's a punishment because she turned in a superior officer for sexual harassment and the old boys network believed the man rather than the woman. This is the second time Ballard and Bosch have worked together. She has the power o...

Published by Little, Brown and Company in 2011. LAPD Detective Harry Bosch is back on the case in these three short stories. Fans of the series know that Harry has had a long career in print and he had already had a long career before he started showing up in Michael Connelly's books. These stories are at varied points in his career, he has various partners and co-workers from throughout the series show up and he has various degrees of success in them. Two of the stories are quite short - short enough that I was just starting to settle in for a good Harry Bosch story and they just...ended. The third is a pretty good story and just long enough that I found myself wishing that Connelly had fleshed it out a bit more into full book length. I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories .

Published by Little, Brown and Company in 2018. Read by Christine Lakin and Titus Welliver Duration: 10 hours, 39 minutes. Unabridged. Harry Bosch is now long-retired from LAPD, but in Dark Sacred Night he continues his work as an unpaid reserve officer with the tiny San Fernando police department  (see this linked video to see the author explain the situation). He is investigating a cold case murder of the leader of a gang based in San Fernando. Bosch is determined to solve it, even if most people would just let it go because of who was killed. His motto is "Everyone Counts or Nobody Counts" - even gang leaders. But, he is also working on another, more personal case. In a previous book, Bosch broke up a prescription drug ring and met an addict who fell into addiction because she was self-medicating to kill the pain of her daughter's murder. Meanwhile, LAPD Detective Renee Ballard continues her work as an overnight detective - part of the "Late Show". She f...

Published by Hachette Audio in 2017 Read by Titus Welliver Duration: 9 hours, 54 minutes Unabridged The narrator, Titus Welliver, as Harry Bosch in the TV series Bosch . Harry Bosch returns in his twentieth outing, more or less (there are a lot of overlapping characters in Michael Connelly's books). Although Bosch is primarily known as an LAPD detective, he is now retired and is working as a volunteer detective for the comparatively tiny San Fernando Police Department. He clears cold cases because San Fernando hasn't had an actual murder in years. But, the opioid crisis has hit San Fernando and the owners of a family-owned pharmacy in one of San Fernando's main shopping districts are killed in an obvious hit by two gunmen. Bosch and the three full-time detectives swing into action. Bosch is also distracted by a case from the 1980's that has come back to haunt him. A death row inmate has new evidence that exonerates him and he is blaming Harry Bosch for framin...

Published by Little, Brown and Company in November of 2016. Read by Titus Welliver Duration: 10 hours, 21 minutes Unabridged. Michael Connelly Harry Bosch is now completely separated from the LAPD and is keeping himself busy with a little detective work and volunteering as a reserve officer for the small city of San Fernando. San Fernando has less than 25,000 residents, covers less than 2 square miles and is completely surrounded by Los Angeles. But, they are cash-strapped and can use the help and Bosch needs to keep fighting crime - it just who he is. Bosch has been digging around on a serial rapist case and has finally started to shake some things loose and the case is starting to break wide open. Out of the blue he gets a call from a former boss at LAPD who now works private security. A reclusive billionaire wants Harry to look for a possible heir from a former girlfriend that he was forced to break up with more than sixty years ago. He has no other heirs and the sharks...

Published in November of 2015 by Hachette Audio Read by Titus Welliver Duration: 9 hours, 24 minutes Unabridged In The Crossing Harry Bosch is newly retired from LAPD - a forced retirement due to a suspension due to a rules infraction. Harry's past caught up to him - too many people in too many important places are tired of Harry's "screw protocol - I'm going to solve this case" attitude. So, Harry is now unemployed. He's suing the department. He's restoring an old motorcycle - a project that he's been looking forward to for a long time. And, he is miserable.  Titus Welliver, the narrator of this audiobook,  portraying Harry Bosch in Amazon Video's  series  Bosch . His goal has always been to solve murders. It's practically his reason for his existence. Now, he has no more murders to solve because he is off the force. Along comes his half brother, Mickey, the defense attorney, also known as "the Lincoln Lawyer" with a ...

Published by Hachette Audio in November of 2014 Read by Titus Welliver Duration: 10 hours, 11 minutes Unabridged In a book that feels like the beginning of the end to the long, productive career of LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, Bosch and his new partner work on two different cold cases. One case is unique in that the murder victim just died but the shot that killed him was fired years before - the injury finally overwhelmed him.  The second case is personal to Bosch's new partner, Lucia "Lucy" Soto. As a child, she was in a day care that was operated in the basement of an apartment building when someone set fire to the garbage in another part of the basement with a Molotov cocktail sort of device. The resulting fire killed a number of the children and their teacher. Since Soto has such a personal stake in this case she should preclude herself from it - but Bosch works it so that they can re-open the case as part of another case. Michael Connelly. Photo by Mark ...

     When Harry Met Mickey Published by Hachette Audio in 2008. Read by Peter Giles Duration: 11 hours, 54 minutes Unabridged At the end of The Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller was gutshot, a horrific injury and one that is difficult to survive, let alone recover from.  At the beginning of the second book in the series, Mickey Haller is not practicing law. Due to his injury, Haller has developed an addiction to pain killers and has been in rehab getting clean. As he descended into addiction he has driven his ex-wife farther away and made that relationship even more difficult. Despite the drugs, Haller was able to recognize that he was in no position to practice law. Then, one day out of the blue he gets a phone call from the chief judge on Los Angeles. A fellow defense attorney named Jerry Vincent has been murdered and Mickey Haller is supposed to take on all of his cases. Haller and the Vincent used to cover for one another on occasion and they listed on...

First published in November of 2012. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Bosch book, Michael Connelly has Harry re-visit a case from twenty years ago in The Black Box . The book starts with a flashback to the Rodney King Riots in 1992. There were so many questionable deaths during the riots (more than 50) that LAPD put out rolling homicide teams that documented scenes as well as possible until they were called out to yet another death. Harry Bosch and this then-partner Jerry Edgar made up one was on one of those teams.  Most of the victims they dealt with were people local to the neighborhoods where they were found so Anneke Jespersen, a foreign press photographer from Denmark stuck out and Harry Bosch always remembered her and felt guilty because he knew that he did not do a good job of starting the investigation into her murder due to the chaos of the riot - the investigation was barely started when they were called to another scene and by the time a true ...

Published in 2011 by Little, Brown and Company I am a big fan of the Harry Bosch series, having read 15 of the 16 books in the series and given all but one top marks. The Drop continues that excellent trend. This is a gritty mystery story (really, it is two mysteries) with a number of twists and turns and a morally ambiguous ending. Michael Connelly. Photo by Mark Coggins Bosch is part of the D.R.O.P program - the Deferred Retirement Option Plan. This allows police officers to work up to five years past their mandatory retirement age, with the department making the decision as to how long he will work. When the story starts Harry has 3 years left in the DROP program and he is working cold murder cases with a young partner named David Chu.  Harry sees the end of his career coming and he wants to get as many cases solved as he can. When a DNA hit on a rape/murder from the late 1980s points to a convicted child molester who would have been nine years old when the victim ...

Not the best Harry Bosch (or Mickey Haller) book but solid enough Published in 2010 by Little, Brown and Company 389 pages Bosch and Haller are half brothers, as has come out if you follow the series. Bosch has become a bit more domesticated, now that he is a full time dad and has a niece and a brother and an ex-sister-in-law and I am not sure if I like it. I like the brooding intensity of the earlier installments of the  Bosch series. Michael Connelly Not that this book does not have its creepy moments, its dramatic moments and action. It has all of that, but it just didn't feel like a Bosch book - and that was all because of the inclusion of Haller and the fact that it was a hybrid book. In The Reversal defense attorney Mickey Haller has been asked to step in as a special prosecutor in a 24 year old case involving a child murder. The case was resolved 24 years ago but a DNA test has cast doubt on the verdict and a court has ordered the conviction to be reversed. ...

Tremendous. Unbelievably strong. Published in 2003 by Hachette Audio. Read by Len Cariou. Duration: 19 hours, 37 minutes. Unabridged. Michael Connelly Allow me a rare moment to gush over Lost Light by Michael Connelly. I've reviewed over 500 books and rarely do I gush, so please permit me this indulgence. Harry Bosch has retired. He no longer has the power and the protection of the badge. He also no longer has the limits and restraints of a cop. He is enticed to start investigating a case that he never solved and soon gets sucked into way more than he bargained for. Connelly leads us into the dark world of criminal conspiracies, police bureaucracy and the FBI counter-terrorism unit. Len Cariou, the narrator, did such a strong job that I can honestly say that I have never heard a better job of narration, and maybe only one or two that equal his effort. Cariou is especially strong reading the part of Lawton Cross, a former LAPD detective who is a quadripl...

Thoroughly enjoyable audiobook Read by Len  Cariou Duration: 10 hours, 57 minutes Michael Connelly Fans of Harry Bosch know that he is named for the Renaissance painter Heironymous Bosch. Bosch the painter specialized in sweeping panoramic paintings of hell, with details of how individual sinners were being gouged, burned and otherwise tormented by gleeful demons. Connelly has commented many times that Harry Bosch is meant to be our tour guide through the hellish side of Los Angeles - the world of serial killers, hidden sins and chaos. Interestingly, Bosch the detective sits in his house high in the hills of Los Angeles looking down on the panorama of it all, just as the viewer of a Bosch painting sees hell from high above. In The Narrows , Bosch spends a great deal of time in Las Vegas. It would not be inappropriate to say that Vegas is "Sodom" to LA's "Gomorrah" - twins in sin. Bosch is worried that his daughter is growing up in Las V...

Race is an issue in this great mystery Published by Hachette Audio Read by Dick Hill Duration: 10 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged Michael Connelly Angels Flight , an early installment in the Harry Bosch series, is as good as the rest in the series meaning, at least in my mind, it is a proud member of one of the best set of detective novels currently being produced. Michael Connelly 's books are usually deep and gritty and this one is no different. The lead character is Harry Bosch, the leader of a 3 detective team in the LAPD that is assigned an unusually sensitive case. A well-known civil rights attorney that has successfully sued LAPD over and over again for violations of federal civil rights laws has been murdered on the eve of an especially notorious case against the LAPD. Of course, everyone inside LAPD and out believe that a police officer killed him in a fit of revenge and the city is seething. Set just a few years after the Rodney King riots and t...

Not the best Bosch book, which means that it is merely very, very good and not excellent Read by Dick Hill. 11 hours, 11 minutes. Connelly's Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch is named after a Renaissance painter who specialized in fanciful and gruesome visions of hell from high above and detailed looks at the tortures that it holds for its residents. Hieronymus Bosch is designed to be our guide through the modern hell of Los Angeles - at least that's the way it seems to the Hollywood Homicide Division. Fittingly, The Black Ice starts with Harry Bosch watching a wildfire burn part of the canyon below his home. His thoughts are interrupted with a radio call about a homicide and Bosch descends the mountain into the madness. A long, complicated case unrolls for Bosch as he goes against direct orders and privately investigates the presumed suicide of a narcotics and I will go no further so as to avoid spoilers. Michael Connelly Dick Hill read this installation of th...

Not the strongest of the series but very, very good Michael Connelly is one of the two best living detective writers, in my opinion, the other being Robert Crais. Having noted in the title for this review that this book is not the strongest in the series, I must also note that it makes this book receive a grade of merely an "A" rather than the normal "A+." Michael Connelly Bosch's books are gritty but not over the top. He is principled but not a boy scout. This particular Harry Bosch novel, City of Bones , deals with an old homicide uncovered in the hills surrounding Los Angeles. Bosch finds romance, has a major career shift and it has a surprise ending. No other plot details to avoid spoilers. You can join the Bosch novels at any point but I'd recommend starting at the beginning. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: City of Bones by Michael Connelly . Reviewed on May 3, 2009.