MICHAEL CONNELLY'S TWO KINDS OF TRUTH

Harry Bosch is still working cold cells, his office a converted cell at the San Fernando PD. But when the small town is hit by a double murder at a pharmacy, Harry's experience means he becomes the primary on the case, which he quickly realises is not just a brutal killing attached to a random robbery.

But just before the murders were called in, Bosch had been visited by an old LAPD partner Lucia Soto, accompanied by a DA and an investigator from the departments new Conviction Integrity Unit. Preston Borders, a sex killer Bosch had put away thirty years ago has petitioned for a new trial, based on the confession of another criminal to his lawyer. As the other man is now dead, the lawyer came forward, and a recheck of the evidence discovered new DNA evidence which backs up the confession. And if someone else killed Danielle Skyler, Bosch must have framed Borders with the evidence that did convict him.

Two Kinds Of Truth is Michael Connelly's second novel released this year, following The Late Show, which marked the debut of a new cop character, Renee Ballard. In my review of that book, to which you can link here, I wrote that Connelly's books are character-driven, though never shrinking as police procedurals, and often in the Bosch series resembling hard-boiled detective stories as well. I also noticed, in the previous Bosch novel, The Wrong Side Of Goodbye (link to that review here) the way Connelly's weaving together of two complex stories became driven by plot—which I thought might reflect the different approach to writing the Bosch TV series.

This novel's two stories aren't as complex, nor as deeply-layered as The Wrong Side Of Goodbye's were, but they are also, in a sense plot-driven. The pharmacy killings lead to a more serious drugs case, and Harry winds up going undercover to get to the bottom of the prescription opioid racket. Meanwhile, Harry hires his half-brother Mickey Haller to defend him in the re-opened murder case, which turns into a courtroom drama, and most interestingly, one based on what is, in effect, a locked-room mystery.

The first story is a thriller, and it really stretches the image of Harry as an action hero. Its pacing is quicker than the other story, in which the investigation has to proceed layer by layer, and much of it done by Haller and his investigator, and reported back to Harry. It also has to resolve itself like clockwork: legal clockwork, and legal is the meaning of the two truths in the novel's title. The mesh of the stories isn't as seamless as you'd hope: but both wind up being page-turners, reading to get to the solutions. It's the way in which thrillers and puzzles get to a similar place by different means; the dark interiors of hard-boiled Harry are what gets passed by to an extent. The great thing is, it doesn't matter. Undercover thriller, courtroom drama, locked room mystery. The menace of drug rings and the menace of venal DAs and Rat Squad cops. And Harry Bosch, whose character remains as deeply compelling as ever. Michael Connelly remains the best in the business.

Two Kinds Of Truth by Michael Connelly

Orion, £19.99, ISBN 9781409145554

published 31 October

note: this review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

MICHAEL CONNELLY'S WRONG SIDE OF GOODBYE

A new Harry Bosch novel is always an event (see photo). In The Wrong Side Of Goodbye Harry has found himself a bolthole. Having sued LAPD over his dismissal, and won, he's now working cold cases part-time and unpaid for the tiny San Fernando department, an arrangement that allows him the freedom to take private assignments as well. So when he's approached by a former LAPD colleague now working a lucrative security gig, he accepts $10,000 to visit the reclusive aircraft billionaire Whitney Vance in his Pasadena mansion. It's a scene redolent of the opening of The Big Sleep, with almost as much sad nostalgia. Vance had a young love while he was at university, breaking away from his family and studying film, shades of Howard Hughes. She was a Mexican named Vibiana who worked in the school cafeteria. When she got pregnant, Vance's father sent people to take care of her; she disappeared from his life. Vance transferred to Cal Tech and took over the family business. Sixty-five years later, Vance is dying and wants to know if he has actually left an heir.

Meanwhile Harry and his partner, Bella Lourdes, are investigating the Screen Cutter, a serial rapist who cuts screen doors to enter houses and rape Latina-looking women who happen to be ovulating. Harry's concerned that such attacks tend to escalate in ferocity as well as frequency.

What's particularly interesting here is the way the cases create echoes of each other but never actually intersect in the way readers so often might expect them to do. They also echo much of the Bosch history as well: the novel opens with a scene recalling Bosch's own time in Vietnam, as a helicopter built by Vance crashes there on a rescue mission; a dying soldier's last word is 'Vibiana'. His relationship with his daughter Maddie, who's lost her mother, reflects the issues of parenting and motherhood in both cases. And Harry's still facing antipathy from LAPD over his lawsuit; he is viewed as a traitor by many cops. And when Vance dies, the search for an heir becomes one with multi-billion dollar stakes, and Harry can trust no one, least of all the man who put the job his way. There are even echoes of Raynard Waits from Echo Park, and the clever merging of that novel with City of Bones in the Bosch TV series.

This isn't as intense as the very best of the Bosch novels, rather it's more diffuse and layered. Early on I noticed something slightly different in the narrative, the way Harry's perceptions were revealing so much depth, observations of the unseen as well as the seen. Connelly has always been an excellent reporter in his writing, here I was struck by the way he'd seemed to move beyond that somewhat. Which is necessary, because the stories, both of which are complex, move with a relentless drive which could easily allow readers to miss crucial details. Not plot points, necessarily, but those of character, of nuance, which keep you involved even as you get caught up in the stories. In fact, as the pace increases, the depth of detail slows down, so the finish almost seems rushed. It is a long novel, nearly 400 pages, and in an afterword Connelly thanks his editors, implying the original ms was even longer.

In a positive way, I thought this might be considered his first post-Bosch TV novel. It's almost as if Connelly has melded two separate novels into one, in the same way the series combined elements of multiple novels together. Usually, people drawn to series novels from TV are advised to start at the beginning; although this is an older Bosch, in a different setting, with different supporting cast, this would be a novel viewers of the series would recognise immediately. I would have been happy to see it run longer; there was room not only in the plot elements but also for reflection, and as I suggested above, this is a reflective book behind its narrative drive. And beyond musings on the excellence of the LA Dodgers' baseball announcer Vin Scully, who is retiring as this story takes place; even Scully's name-check mirrors part of Bosch's story-- would he could continue as long as Scully did!

The Wrong Side Of Goodbye by Michael Connelly

Orion £19.99 ISBN 9781409145530

NOTE: This review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)