Trunk Music by Michael Connelly

Trunk Music is the 5^th of 19 Harry Bosch books, written in 2002. Anthony N. Aliso, also known as Tony, was the owner of TNA (not tits and ass) Productions in Hollywood, and he was murdered. He was killed in the trunk of his Rolls Royce, two shots in the back of the head, also called “Trunk Music.” It looks like a mob hit. Tony had traveled back and forth between his office in Hollywood and the casinos in Las Vegas, and he had been living a high live style at the same time his mostly porn movies were far from being blockbusters. It turns out he was using the seedy end of the film business as a way to launder money for the bad guys. The potential killers were numerous: the mob, Tony’s wife, his girlfriend, and numerous people that he had cheated over the years. Harry was just back on the homicide squad following an involuntary leave of absence, and of course there was a territorial matter over who would get to work the crime: the FBI, the Organized Crime Intelligence Division, or Harry and his team. The plot gets complicated when in the process of his investigation, Harry runs into his old girlfriend Eleanor Wish, who just happens to be a former FBI agent who was convicted of a felony and has been trying to rebuild her life as a card player. As a cop, Harry wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with convicted felons, but he couldn’t help himself. Also, there was the guy who looked like he was the likely murderer, but he was an undercover federal agent who had been trying to get the goods on Tony before the murder. It would have helped if Harry had known he was on the right side of the law. The book is a bit convoluted, and this was not Connelly at his finest, but it was still a decent read and when Connelly is not at his finest, he’s still better than most.