The 3 best books by Michael Connelly and more…

The best idea to not succumb to the phagocytic tendency of Novelty regarding the police genre is to have a police officer as a solid character who runs through most of your novels. Come on, that's my impression in the case of good old Michael connelly.

Not that he disparages the crime novel genre that has been in vogue for quite some years. But it is always appreciated to find a purer detective novel in which the inspector on duty gives a good account of criminals of all kinds and conditions without having to go through torture, phobias and various filias 😛

Because To talk about Connelly is to talk in the first instance about Harry Bosch, a police officer either in action or since his later retirement at times stereotypical and at others absolutely avant-garde. A kind of modern Sherlock Holmes, dedicated to the cause of unearthing the most sinister cases without leaving aside that sinister point that submerges us in the sewers of power, money, vice or any other engine capable of bringing out the worst in being. human.

A journalist in his early days, today Connelly is already a writer devoted to the commercial cause, to the tendency of the police. But the thing is not without merit. There are so many writers dumped into that black plot that managed to elevate them in sales lists…. Only the most capable do this through the natural selection of readers' tastes (with the push of marketing, of course).

3 Recommended Novels By Michael Connelly

the dark hours

A bifurcated novel, one of which you never know if the cases will finally come together to gain an even more surprising ultimate meaning. The thing is, it's a double investigation that only a guy like Harry Bosch could try to pull off. And I say try because the sticks in the wheels are sometimes put by those who least expect it. But that's what a good suspense novel is all about. Connelly tries to make us completely paranoid and at times succeeds. With a horizon that finally makes sense of the matter, this novel equates old Harry Bosch with the best of the great policemen.

Chaos reigns in Hollywood on New Year's Eve. Renée Ballard, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, receives a call shortly after midnight: the owner of a car shop has been fatally wounded by a bullet in the middle of a street party.

He quickly concludes that it is related to another unsolved murder being investigated by Detective Harry Bosch. At the same time, Ballard tracks down a vicious serial rapist couple, the Midnight Men. Detective Ella feels that she is going against the grain in a police department changed by the pandemic and social unrest, so she seeks the help of Harry Bosch. As they work together, they must constantly look over each other's shoulders. The predators they are after are willing to kill to keep their secrets hidden.

the dark hours

The black box

Badly closed cases can be a good argument with which a novel seems to open the way to the character's past, with the trick of what was omitted from that past, with the bait of what could have been in that remote time. But there is a risk in this type of proposal…, there are not a few cases in which our imaginary is filled with flashbacks and we end up dizzy as chickens. Luckily this is not the case.

Brushstrokes of the past, concrete data, a bond released from the present to the past to hook us from beginning to end. And, why not say it, a special connection with another of his novels that I will now cite as another of my best: The burning room.

Summary: In a case spanning 20 years, Harry Bosch links a recent murder bullet to a file from 1992, the death of a young photographer during the Los Angeles riots. Harry was the one in charge of the investigation in the first instance, but then it was transferred to a specialized unit in the altercations and it was never solved. Now the ballistics report shows that it was not a random act of violence, but something more personal and connected to a more complex intrigue. As an investigator through the wreckage after a plane crash, Bosch searches for the "black box," the key piece of evidence that will tie the entire case together.

black box michael connelly

The burning room

I already mentioned it at the time, when I reviewed this novel. A somewhat hilarious proposal, with a fresh humor that masterfully adorns the whole. A guy, assassinated on a delayed basis, seeks justice for a stray bullet that only years later ended up manifesting itself ...

Summary: Police officer Harry Bosch is charged with a case between the grotesque and the ridiculous. At least that's how it seems to him from the start. That a guy dies from a bullet ten years after receiving it seems more like a later natural death, unrelated to a murderous bullet with a memory function.

But the death of the victim ends up being associated with a direct cause of the shooting that has manifested itself with that decade of difference, so it is appropriate to investigate ex officio who the remote murderer may be. Together with her partner, the detective Lucía Soto, who is unskilled in homocidal matters due to her inexperience in the matter, Harry begins to investigate a case as strange as it is complicated.

But the truth is that stray bullets don't exist. They always end up staying in the bodies they are targeting, whims of weapons. And Harry begins to sense that willingness to kill the victim, and considers the reasons why this victim did not end up participating in the police in the matter at the time.

At that moment the click of the good researcher awakens in Harry Bosch and in the reader, who until now surely shared a certain sense of comic surprise. And indeed, there is more, much more than a casual death, from whose trace the shot of ten years ago seems to have been removed as a mere accident without relevance.

At book The burning room we are presented with one of the most particular, extravagant, and at the same time fascinating cases in the history of the detective novel. What you start off reading as an almost humorous story about a vicious cop who seems to make fun of the world. it ends up darkening towards a magnetic secret, the one that will end up giving a full explanation to the case of the dead man ten years after he was shot.

the burning room

Other recommended novels by Michael Connelly…

The way of resurrection

Only Connelly is capable of interspersing sagas in a fruitful way for both series. And even he would say that it is positive for the characters on which these series revolve. Because Harry Bosch in his twenty-fifth appearance and Mickey Haller in his seventh form a tandem that the author can always use again to form a team that is unbeatable in plot.

Harry Bosch, a retired Los Angeles Police Department detective, collaborates with his stepbrother, defense attorney Mickey Haller, to solve an impossible crime. As usual, Haller has taken on one of the most difficult cases, in which the chances of winning are one in a million. He agrees to represent a woman who is in prison for killing her husband, a sheriff's deputy. Despite having been convicted four years ago, she continues to maintain her innocence. It is then that she asks Bosch for help, and the detective, upon reviewing the case, discovers something that does not add up and perceives the sheriff's department's eagerness to solve the murder of one of their own as soon as possible.

The path to justice for both attorney and investigator is fraught with danger. Those who do not want the case to be reopened will stop at nothing to prevent the exceptional team of Bosch and Haller from discovering the true motives for the sheriff's deputy's murder.

Star of the desert

Bosch's instinct has its particular gap. It can happen when one analyzes something from the deepest interiorities. A change of plane is necessary then and, sometimes, a new investigation can open doors never seen before...

It's been a year since Detective Renée Ballard left the police force tired of misogyny, demoralization and endless bureaucracy. However, after being told by the police chief himself that he can choose his own fate in the department, Ballard retrieves his badge and leaves the "night session" to rebuild the Cold Case Unit into the coveted Robbery-Homicide Division. .

Harry Bosch has spent years working on a case that torments him, but that he has not been able to solve: the murder of an entire family at the hands of a psychopath who is still at large. Ballard makes her an offer: If he comes to work with her as a volunteer investigator in the new Cold Case Unit, he will be able to pursue his "white whale" with the backing of police department resources. Both must put aside old resentments to work together again and track down a dangerous assassin.

Star of the desert

Holy night

If there is a hero of the crime novel who stands out for that particular sympathy of the eccentric, that is the Harry Bosch of Michael connelly. Because we find ourselves before an old detective with the great baggage of his twenty novels behind him. And if a protagonist is able to survive such overexposure, it is because it is really magnetic.

Perhaps in this novel a kind of relief will already materialize. Because the detective Renée Ballard is no longer a coincidence after appearing capitalizing on her previous novel Night session. And it is that this police points out ways in a Hollywood full of real contrasts, from which to always get the black juice of all kinds of gruesome stories.

The iconic encounter between Bosch and Ballard comes with the uncomfortable violence of an after-hours visit by Harry to the Hollywood police station. Naturally he doesn't paint anything there. He may not even be known to everyone at his former San Fernando police station. So good old Harry is about to get shot. But finally things are getting back together as best they can until expulsion without major reprisals.

But I think Harry knew very well what to do when he left the old file of the murder of Daisy Clayton on the table. The old cases always torment the police when they were inconclusive. Ballard reviews that documentation in this regard and, how could it be otherwise, is interested in the extremes of such an abominable matter around the death of a girl of only fifteen years.

Shortly after his unexpected visit to the police station, Harry will discover that his bait has had its intended effect. Together with Ballar, taking advantage of his youth, his mettle and his instinct, they will look for new evidence that can close this matter once and for all.

Holy night

The fifth witness

I rescue this novel for the podium because it is groundbreaking with respect to the rest of Connelly's work. It is a kind of judicial thriller, John Grisham style. Of lawyers, economic crisis, people in distress and the feeling that anyone can end anyone's life by surviving debt and poverty ...

Summary: Attorney Mickey Haller is used to defending people in extreme situations. And with the economic crisis, troubled customers abound. Especially if your difficulties are related to the banks and the payment of your mortgages.

This is the case of Lisa Trammel, who can barely support her home and child after her husband left them. Things are not going well for Lisa, but they could get much worse. They have just found a director of the bank who had granted Lisa the mortgage murdered and she is going to be accused of the crime. Haller is going to have to put all the meat on the grill if he wants to save his client from falling into the abyss.

the fifth witness

The two faces of the truth

The black market for drugs is no longer just a matter of illegal trafficking from vessels that infiltrate large shipments of cocaine, opiates or whatever is necessary. Caches can now be moved more underground between drug labels.

Y Michael connelly has decided to tackle the depths of that sinister parallel market by emulating the Don winslow with inspirations from the most international crime but keeping the hook of the everlasting Harry Bosch, always accompanied by his long shadow, from that past as a veteran Los Angeles policeman, a career in which he arrived from Vietnam to join the city police, he ended up being expelled in some twisted case that ruined his prestige, working as a detective in the meantime and returning to the body with renewed energy but still subjected to the judgment of doubts.

In spite of everything, Harry continues to be open to any possibility in which risk concentrates all his forces, perhaps to forget his most personal plot. In "The Two Faces of Truth" he finds a new field of investigation that appears with the intense risks of its necessary infiltration to reach the origin of everything in the buoyant business of drugs. Of course, the already risky commitment is It thickens even more when the shadows of the past return in a new attempt to carry it forever into darkness. It is the price to pay for trying to put the bad guys in jail.

Perhaps it is a simple consequence, a veiled threat to start investigating his new case ... The point is that new evidence is offering new malpractice in a previous Bosch case. The nightmare comes to life again. The memory of those days of ignominy, expelled from the body, take up new vigor. Harry thinks he's more prepared this time. But once again his companions ignore possible help. The truth may be priced too high. And this time Harry Bosch senses that it is no longer just a matter of seeking his way out of the body but also of his complete erasure from the scene.

Despite the fact that the two questions appear as parallel coincidences, only if Harry Bosch is able to link causes and effects, actions and consequences, will he be able to force the necessary turn so that the single truth ends up escaping the shadows that try to devour him. It may end up being devoured by its shadow, but it is possible to find a beam of light from which to drag those who seem capable of sinking it forever.

the two faces of the truth

The gods of guilt

This time it is the turn of Mickey Haller, Harry Bosch's own stepbrother and also the star of some previous installments, you sprinkle among Connelly's extensive production. Haller is a lawyer, to his credit several fascinating cases in which he has always skirted the darker side of the underworld, sometimes counting on his own stepbrother to elucidate the most intricate aspects of his necessary investigations in favor of the best defense or control of the matter. .

The gods of guilt evoke the great guilt that has been dragging Haller since he tried to thrive in the prosecutorial career and that ended up bearing the indirect guilt of an acquittal obtained for an unrepentant murderer. Haller is not going through his best moment. But a new posh case appears as a new possibility to resume his career and rebuild his life devoted to alcohol. You just have to defend a guy accused of killing a cache hooker.

And yet the woman's name plunges him back into misery. She is Gloria Dayton, whom Conelly remembers how he managed to get her off drugs… But deep down Gloria had always been in danger. She was a confidant to be able to stop a great trafficker. And perhaps from those muds these muds ...

Could it be that Gloria knew too much? To what extent is your client involved? That the case splashes on him so directly puts a greater burden on Mickey. Your client's defense may become a judgment on himself, on his past. Ultimately, the jury will decide the truth of the matter. And from the hypersubjective notion with which Mickey Haller will address the matter, it is more than likely that Gloria's murder has nothing to do with what it seems at first.

the gods of guilt

The verdict

Netflix and its firm commitment to literature as a space where you can find material for scripts by the bucketload. On this occasion, this novel by the ineffable Harry Bosch plays, giving up in part his usual protagonism in favor of a cause with judicial overtones, like the great thrillers of John Grisham...

After two years of setbacks, things are looking up for defense attorney Mickey Haller. He is finally ready to go back to court. It is then that he receives double news: his colleague Jerry Vincent has been murdered and he is going to take charge of the defense of Walter Elliott, a prominent movie mogul accused of murdering her wife and her lover. However, while preparing for a case that could boost his career, Haller learns that Vincent's killer may be after him as well.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Police Detective Harry Bosch is determined to find Vincent's killer and isn't opposed to using Haller as bait. As the danger mounts, these two loners realize their only option is to work together.

Cuesta abajo

Connelly's reissues are countless. In this case we recover a fascinating novel like "Downhill", where the epic of our Harry Bosch points to unsuspected discoveries that can call everything into question. Because big mistakes also lead to new cases that no one would want to solve...

Harry Bosch has been given three years to retire from the Los Angeles Police Department, and he wants to throw himself into new cases like never before. In one morning he gets two.
DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches that of a 29-year-old convicted rapist. Was he an eight-year-old killer or did something go horribly wrong at the new Regional Crime Lab? This latter possibility could compromise all of the lab's DNA cases currently in court.
On the other hand, Bosch and his partner are called to a crime scene steeped in internal politics. Councilman Irvin Irving's son jumped or was pushed from a window at the Chateau Marmont. Irving, Bosch's old enemy, demands that Harry take charge of the investigation. Relentless in the investigation of both cases, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries: a murderer who has been operating undiscovered for no less than three decades and a political conspiracy that dates back to the police department's dark past.

5/5 - (8 votes)

4 comments on “The 3 best books by Michael Connelly and more…”

  1. Hello. I really want this author. Thank you very much for the recommendations. I discovered your blog a short time ago and it is very useful to me. Congratulations on your work.

    Reply

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