City of Bones: Summary and book reviews of City of Bones by Michael Connelly, plus links to an excerpt from City of Bones and a biography of Michael Connelly.

On New Year's Day, Detective Harry Bosch fields a call that a dog has found a bone--a bone that the dog's owner, a doctor, feels certain is a human bone. Bosch investigates, and that chance discovery leads him to a shallow grave in the Hollywood hills, evidence of a murder committed more than twenty years earlier. It's a cold case, but it stirs up Bosch's memories of his own childhood as an orphan in the city. He can't let it go. Digging through police reports and hospital records, tracking down street kids and runaways from the 1970s, Bosch finds a family ripped apart by an absence--and a trail, ever more tenuous, into a violent, terrifying world. As the case takes Bosch deeper into the past, a rookie cop named Julia Brasher brings him alive in the present in a way no one has in years. Bosch has been warned about the trouble that comes with dating a rookie, but no warning could withstand the heat between them--or prepare Bosch for the explosions when the case takes a hard turn. A suspect bolts, a cop is shot, and suddenly Bosch's cold case has all of L.A. in an uproar--and Bosch fighting to keep control in a lawless and brutal showdown. Drawing on the "precision-tooled twists" and "wellspring of authentically lurid detail" (Los Angeles magazine) that have made him one of the fastest-selling novelists at work today, Michael Connelly has written a riveting, hard-edged, and unforgettable thriller, proof that he is among "the most talented of crime writers" (The New Yorker).

Media Reviews

Kirkus Reviews ....the case itself is marked by coincidences and shifting suspicions that suggest untidiness rather than virtuosity, and there's precious little of the unremitting tension that's won Connelly such a following over the past ten years. A bone to throw to loyalists while they wait for another case to rival A Darkness More Than Night (2001).   Publisher's Weekly Starred Review. [Connelly's] latest adventure is as dark and angst-ridden as any of Bosch's past outings, but it also crackles with energy...Connelly is such a careful, quiet writer that he can slow down the story to sketch in some relatively minor characters...without missing a beat.   Booklist, Bill Ott Starred Review . Hard-boiled cop fiction at its most gripping.   BookPage Bosch is back for a stellar encore performance.

Recent Reader Reviews

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• Thrillers
  
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