On Christmas, Calexico Moore (LAPD’s narcotics) found dead in a hotel & they need to review if it was murder or suicide. Harry Bosch (LAPD investigator) is assigned this “Major narcs” case, they know of the illegal past “Black Glass” narcotic from Hawaii. The death is from a new naracotic called “Black Ice” imported from Mexicans. Black Ice is easier to transport across the Mexico bourder, and harder to stop than Black Glass - when reading it was hard to believe people swallowing “balloons” carr...

Fairly depressing, but alright if it's your cup of tea. Not for me 4 of 10 stars

4★“As he drove he thought of the night before and how it had made him feel to comfort Sylvia Moore. It made him feel like a cop in a Rockwell painting. Like he had made a difference.”Harry Bosch. LA cop. An irritant to the department but somehow, he’s still there – just. When a dead cop is found suicided in a motel unit at Christmas, he’s not notified.“‘So, Bosch, you should be happy you aren’t involved. It’s Christmas, for Chrissake.’ But that wasn’t good enough. Bosch should have been called a...

Continuing on my quest for a new mystery series suitable for distraction, I hit up my librarian for the second book in Michael Connelly's famous series centering on Detective Hieronymus Bosch. I ended up rather pleased with result, at least until the Mexican vacation. While there are moments that feel somewhat formulaic, Connelly puts enough flavor into it that I enjoyed the result.Harry is spending Christmas alone and on-call, peaceably listening to the scanner as he makes his dinner. He hears

Good police procedural, especially if you are a fan of the show. I’m not a fan of Mexican cartel reads but I did enjoy this book. Nice details and we get to know Bosch better. There are parallels between the main victim and Bosch. Clever story with elaborate turns of events. Great ending that I didn’t see coming. My only problem with both books is that they need tighter editing. The author repeats some details 2 and 3 times and there are a few sections where paragraphs become unclear. Hence the

The Black Ice (Harry Bosch #2) - Michael ConnellyThis is the second book in the Harry Bosch series and the beginnings of one of the most wonderful police procedural series ever written IMHO. Michael Connelly is somewhere near the very top of the heap when it comes to writing the police procedural genre. And, the guy is no slouch, albeit he has only written something like +25 novels now. Oh well, maybe he will get serious and pick up the pace someday. Ha. Obviously, Connelly has found a fantastic...

All my concerns about the unnatural dialogue in Michael Connelly's first Harry Bosch novel, The Black Echo, are completely cleared up for his second outing. Bosch's supervisor, Pounds, has some sentences that could use some contractions to make them more natural, but he doesn't spend enough time talking for it to matter.Again, Connelly provides a twist in the end that I did not see coming, and the whole mystery was very well done. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series more now than I w...

It's Christmas night and L.A.P.D homicide detective Harry Bosch is eating his Christmas dinner alone at home, with only a jazz CD and the police scanner to keep him company. He doesn't mind spending the holiday alone; in fact, he prefers it. Harry is a loner who identifies with a solitary coyote that hangs out near his house.Harry's evening is interrupted when he picks up chatter on the police scanner regarding a suspicious death in a down-at-the-heels Hollywood motel. It's clear from the scanne...

I am so glad I went back to the beginning to read the Harry Bosch novels in order. These early books are so good. This one is second in the series and gives us a lot of information about Harry's boyhood and some of the experiences which shaped him into the person we now know. It is a really easy book to read and one which is exceedingly difficult to put down. The story is good, the characters intriguing and Harry's relationship issues are always interesting. And in the way of any good series the...

LAPD south of the border action.It’s hard not to like Harry Bosch as a crime fiction hero. Michael Connelly’s recurring tough guy, Vietnam veteran Los Angeles police detective is the kind of murder mystery protagonist a seasoned reader of the genre can get behind. Surly and reclusive, a loner more than a team player, Bosch provides a modern variation of the noir crime fiction sleuth.Connelly’s 1993 thriller takes Bosch to the Mexican border towns of Calexico and Mexicali to investigate what begi...

After being blown away with the introduction of cop detective Harry Bosch in The Black Echo, I just can't help but feel that the author is experiencing the "sophomore slump". The story in The Black Ice screams mediocre and it does the reader no good when the author writes at such a snail pace. There is literally nothing going action wise even when you're 3/4 into the book. The end does get a bit intense but by that time, you're probably too exhausted to care anymore about what happens and just w...

Last year I decided I was going to re-read the Harry Bosch series in order (at my own pace), and The Black Ice is the second one from my list. I haven’t read them all, but any I had read I thoroughly enjoyed so figured why not go back to the start!The Black Ice is another tightly plotted gem. It has a great story, introduces some great characters and it kept my attention from the very beginning. A body is found in a LA motel room, and it transpires it’s a missing LAPD Narcotics Detective. Rumour...

Harry Bosch, Redux. After nearly dying in the last book, and taking a short fishing/recuperation trip, Harry is back and ready for duty, even though, again, nobody in the LAPD seems to be ready for Bosch to be ready for duty. At every turn, it seems like they are more concerned with appearances than truth, and while I can appreciate that public perception is a vital consideration for them, it just bothers me on a very deep level the lengths that they go to in order to BLOCK investigation. Sigh.

A first class thriller, combining the best of both the police procedural and the hard-boiled detective tradition. Plus--Harry Bosch is a character who grows. Nobody does this stuff better than Connelly.

Most forms of entertainment come with the expectation that the follow-up to well-received debut will invariably fail to reach the same level of quality. Lack of time is almost always the reason. Take television for example. The first episode of a series is often the pilot; when it gets picked up there is rush to get production up and running and traditionally it is the second episode that most displays the signs of “just get it out.” With movies, an unexpected hit receives a release date for the...

I really like Harry. For some reason I care about what happens to him, like he is a friend I know. I do understand it’s fiction, but on some level it’s real to me! He may be my new book boyfriend!

Time saver tip: if you've read my review of any Harry Bosch book, you've read 'em all. Since I don't reveal plots and reserve my comments to the overall book/author, characterization, style, etc...I just don't feel the need to repeat myself as in most cases series books if any good at all do remain consistent. The star ratings might change, but not my opinion of the series as a whole.Michael Connelly is a well know and very popular author in the mystery/detective and police procedural genres. E...

Reviewed at Cross My Heart Writings & ReviewsLAPD Detective Harry Bosch strikes out on his own to investigate the apparent suicide of an narcotics officer in this twisted, gritty police procedural.  His orders are to leave it alone, but Harry's gut is telling him something is wrong about the whole thing and well . . . we all know Harry doesn't play by the rules.  Meantime, he's assigned another officer's cases and upon closer examination, he strongly suspects that the murder and suicide cases ar...

Story reviewHarry is still very much an island within his own department, which, given the players, is a very good thing. Ethical lines keep moving in the wrong direction and he's not in that club. Despite obstacles presented by his own department, Harry pursues this case involving a murdered cop when others were ready to classify it as a suicide. He's got great instincts and needed all of them with this one as the bad guys weren't always outside of law enforcement. We also learn a lot about Har...

I found The Black Ice to be a a bit disappointing. I think it is due to two reasons. The first is its similarity to an Alistair MacLean novel rather than sticking to the usual noir tone of the Bosch universe. Caravan to Vaccares comes to mind. As does as the movie Sicario. In any case, Bosch is less a detective and more of a one man demolition army in this book.The second is its reliance on an overly convoluted plot. This affected me in a couple of ways. I found it hard to get invested in the st...