REVIEWED BY RAY O’LEARY:

MICHAEL CONNELLY – The Black Echo. Harry Bosch #1. Little Brown, hardcover, 1992. St. Martin’s, paperback, 1993. Reprinted many times since. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for “Best First Novel” for 1992, and was nominated for the Anthony Award in the same category and the Dilys Award for “Best Novel.” TV Adaptation: Season three of Bosch (Amazon Video) was based on both The Black Echo (Book 1) and A Darkness More Than Night (Book 7).

   Harry Bosch is working when an anonymous phone call to the police informs them that there’s a body in a drainpipe at Mulholland Dam. At first it seems to be a simple case of a heroin overdose, but Harry recognizes the corpse as a fellow “tunnel rat” named Meadows who served with him In Viet Nam. A few discrepancies lead Harry to believe that Meadows was murdered and placed in the drainpipe, and he soon discovers that Meadows was a suspect in an old safety deposit box burglary.

   Harry then learns that Meadows was apparently tortured before his death and had recently pawned a piece of jewelry that had been in one of the safe deposit boxes. The bank burglary is being handled ,by the FBI, and Harry has to threaten to go to the newspapers to force his way onto the investigating team. Meantime, Internal Affairs is suspicious of his connection with the dead man and assigns two men to try and get the goods on Harry.

   I can’t fault the writing or the story telling, which is first rate; it’s the plotting that I have to take to task. I picked this book up at the same rummage sale that I bought The Poet [a non-Bosch book from 1996], which I read before this one.

[WARNING: Plot details are going to be discussed so if you are planning to read either of those books, do not read any further.] This book was written earlier, so perhaps I should have read it first, but it doesn’t matter: both have the same basic plot. The crime is different and the protagonist is different but both feature crimes in which the FBI agent in charge turns out to be the one behind the crimes. And in both, the hero forces himself onto the FBI team and falls in love with the female FBI agent working with him. And both wind up alone, though for different reasons. [END OF WARNING]

   One other thing: the burglars break into the bank by digging a tunnel that connects to those large drive-in sewers that they have in Los Angeles. When Connelly describes these sewers, he scrupulously avoids mentioning the one pop culture reference that made everyone familiar with them: the classic giant-bug movie Them. Why?