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THE BURNING ROOM
by Michael Connelly
Little, Brown, November 2014
400 pages
$28.00
ISBN: 0316225932


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Harry Bosch, the police detective who has starred in twenty previous Michael Connelly procedurals, returns to probe cold case crimes in THE BURNING ROOM. As he has done in the past, Bosch uses his considerable experience and investigative wisdom to track down the bad guys, using methods that may not meet with the approval of his superiors. He thinks he is smarter than they are, and most of the time he is correct. But a lot is at stake for him now. He is close to retirement, and a misstep could endanger his retirement income. Bosch does not let these considerations stop him from breaking rules that stand in his way.

Bosch is assigned to the LAPD's Open Unsolved Unit, which means that he investigates cold cases. He looks for new evidence or new technology that may be applied to old clues. As the book begins, he is assigned to a case that is both cold and hot, as Orlando Merced, a mariachi musician, has died a decade after originally being shot. Merced suffered greatly from complications caused by the bullet that had remained lodged in his spine, and the book's opening scene is a graphic description of how his body had been ravaged. The crime, initially listed as attempted murder, has now become a homicide. It is a high-profile case because a well-known politician had used the injured musician as part of his anti-crime efforts. Bosch gets pressure from his superiors to close as soon as possible. He suspects that politically sensitive secrets from the past are in danger of being revealed.

Bosch has a new young partner, Lucy Soto, who is working with him on this case. Soon both Bosch and the reader sense that something else is going on with Soto besides her commitment to the case. It turns out that she is trying to discover information on another cold case with which she has a personal connection. As a child, she was the only survivor of a tragic fire in an illegal daycare center. Her teacher and several of her playmates died in that fire. The perpetrators were never brought to justice.

Bosch agrees to help Soto, even though they are stepping into tricky territory by investigating her incident instead of focusing solely on the murder. He finds evidence that the two crimes may have culprits in common and the fire may be connected to a robbery. That robbery may have something to do with the shooting of the mariachi musician, who may not have been the intended target. Good detective work leads him to a gun, a gun-owner, other murders, and connections to powerful people. The great joy of reading Connelly's books is the details he provides into the inner workings of criminal investigations. The plot and character connections are complicated, but Connelly makes it all seem plausible.

§Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York's Hudson Valley.

Reviewed by Anne Corey, December 2014

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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