Tuesday, November 11, 2014

The Burning Room by Michael Connelly

The Burning Room is Michael Connelly’s 19th installment in his popular Harry Bosch series.  With only a year left on his DROP (Deferred Retirement Option Program) contract as part of the Open Unsolved Unit of the LAPD, Bosch has developed a melancholy spirit with many flashbacks to days gone by.  His latest partner, the young intense Lucia Soto is dubbed ‘Lucky Lucy’ for her heroic involvement in a police shoot out a year earlier.  Lucy has a lot to learn and Harry is just the right teacher.  Melancholy spirit aside, Harry still has the instinct to sort out the clues and the skill to extract information from relevant players.  Plus he still enjoys riding the adrenalin fueled momentum that occurs just before he solves a case.

Harry and Lucy are assigned to a high profile case involving the murder of a mariachi musician.  The shooting occurred ten years earlier in the busy Mariachi Plaza but the victim dies just recently of lead poisoning brought on by the bullet being lodged in his spine for a decade.  To Harry’s chagrin, the former mayor who currently has gubernatorial aspirations offers a fifty thousand dollar reward for information leading to an arrest.  Harry has to manipulate the department bureaucrats to get help answering the barrage of nuisance calls brought on by the reward.  He does this by asking the receptionist to transfer all these calls to the Captain in his unit responsible for manpower… clever.

A review of the old case files combined with ballistics on the extracted bullet lead Bosch and Soto in a completely different direction from the original investigation.  They see from public surveillance videos that the dead musician was not the intended target.  The ballistics report shows the bullet was fired from a hunting rifle probably from a nearby hotel window.  After running down each of the other band members, the intended victim is found in Tulsa now running a bar.  The musician reveals that he was having an affair with a powerful business owner’s wife and had left L.A. because of threats from the husband.  Interestingly, Soto finds that the business owner is a strong financial supporter of the former mayor… the one offering the reward.

Meanwhile Bosch discovers the root of his young partner’s passion for police work.  As a child she nearly died in an apartment building fire.  The names of her childhood friends who died of smoke inhalation in the building’s basement daycare (the burning room) are tattooed on her arm.  Her purpose in life is to find who set this fire.  Harry agrees to help her but on his terms and under the radar of department bureaucracy.

In both cases Harry is long on suspicion and short on evidence.  He calls in favors from contacts in the FBI and in city government as well as from a reporter at the L.A. Times.  A pro at department politics, Bosch discriminately withholds information about his cases from his superiors.  Harry knows that implicating the former mayor without sufficient evidence would end his involvement in the case and probably his career.


The Burning Room firmly defends Michael Connelly’s position at the top of my power rotation.  This is Harry Bosch at his best.  With retirement pending Harry’s past is on his mind.  He frequently flashes back to old cases, former partners and past lovers, rationalizing the sacrifices he has made for the job.  Yet he stays focused on his current dynamic caseload.  Harry has retained his old school values and methods and has embraced technology well enough to remain highly effective.  But will his cynicism and lack of respect for authority finally end his career?  Apparently Connelly has great plans for Harry as evidenced by his new series, ‘Bosch’ produced by Amazon Studios and starring Titus Welliver.  Let’s hope the print version continues as well.

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