quidrock's Full Review: Michael Connelly - Nine Dragons: A Novel
Ah, Harry Bosch. Hero of most of Michael Connelly’s superb crime thrillers. Los Angeles detective; stoic, brooding, professional, capable of taking crimes apart bit by bit and then trailing every one of those bits to earth, until the crime is solved.
Not so the Harry Bosch featured in Connelly’s latest, “Nine Dragons”. It’s an engrossing tale that features Harry going overseas to Hong Kong, and reacting in a passionate and somewhat surprising manner when his local crime invades his personal life, and the thing he holds most dear, his daughter, Maggie.
Throughout the tale, Bosch is exasperated by his partner Ignacio Ferras, who wants assignments that will allow him to spend most of his time behind his desk, since he was shot on the job. Called to the scene of a murder of a Chinese liquor store owner (John Li), Harry realizes that his life has intersected with this man’s many years before, and that the owner showed a much younger Harry Bosch a kindness. His radar piqued, Bosch involves a third detective, David Chu, as a translator. Chu’s home is the Asian Gang Unit, and a lead to a possible killer who may be a member of one of the gangs, or Triads, keeps Chu involved in the investigation.
Harry plays cowboy in tracking down leads, particularly in tracing the shell casing of a bullet that Li put in his mouth as one of his last living acts. There’s some interesting data on new technology for bullet casings that bodes for future potential of crimes being solved easier. A Triad connected operative is chased to ground and brought in for questioning. The investigation comes to a grinding halt when Harry receives a threat on his cell phone about his daughter’s kidnapping in Hong Kong.
Bosch’s whole demeanor changes, and what was a routine and interesting investigation turns into a feverish race for Harry and the girl’s mother, Eleanor Wish, to find her. The novel accelerates to hyper speed and random acts of violence propel the drama along. In Hong Kong, in Chapter 28, comes a moment in time where long-time readers of the Bosch series will realize that, from that turning point, the series will pivot and take a decidedly different approach to Bosch’s life and career from that moment on. Despite that larger than life moment, the novel continues with Harry pursuing his child and her captors, then escaping back to the United States.
From that point forward, Nine Dragons becomes a little more pedestrian. There is a gratuitous cameo by Mickey Haller, another Connelly character, in the final chapters, and the solution to the original killing at the liquor store is revealed, with a surprise twist. Connelly, however, appears to be rushing the book to completion, and the ending is a bit of a letdown, given all the action and emotion during the work in Hong Kong (and the reader’s inability to put the book down). The ending promises a change of partners for Bosch in future books. Will the tenacious David Chu join him? A fine outing for Connelly’s hero, and highly recommended.
General Fiction - LAPD Detective Harry Bosch is off the chain in the fastest, fiercest, and highest-stakes case of his life. Fortune Liquors is a smal...More at Barnes and Noble
LAPD Detective Harry Bosch is off the chain in the fastest, fiercest, and highest-stakes case of his life. Fortune Liquors is a small shop in a tough ...More at HotBookSale
While investigating the murder of a Chinese liquor store owner, Harry Bosch gets word his daughter, who lives in Hong Kong with her mother, has been k...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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