| MICHAEL CONNELLY'S BOOKSHELF (2) | |
| Michael Connelly in the Open Directory | Michael Connelly on Open Encyclopaedia |
| Books written by Michael Connelly |
Blood
Work -- that's what Terrell McCaleb used to call his job at the FBI.
Until a heart condition forced him to take early retirement, he headed
all investigations of serial murders in the Los Angeles area. Now he is
recovering from a heart transplant operation and leads a quiet life. But
McCaleb's calm seas turn rough when a story in the L.A. Times brings him
face-to-face with Graciela Rivers, a darkly intriguing woman who hooks
him with the story of her sister's unsolved murder. Against doctor's
orders and his own better judgement, McCaleb agrees to take up the case.
Soon Terry is on the trail of a killer whose crimes are more baffling
and horrifying than anything he has ever encountered. It's a
mind-bending, breakneck case that leads McCaleb into the darkest place
he's ever known, unsure whether he even wants to survive his own
investigation.
(Source: Publisher)
The new thriller from the bestselling
author of Angels Flight, Void
"The messages waiting for Henry Pierce when he plugs in his new
telephone clearly aren't intended for him: "Where is Lilly? This is
her number. It's on the site."" "Pierce has just been thrown out by
his girlfriend and moved into a new apartment, and the company he
founded is headed into the most critical phase of fund-raising.
He's been "chasing the dime" - doing all it takes to come out first
in a technological battle whose victor will make millions. But he
can't get the messages for a woman named Lilly out of his head:"
""Uh, yes, hello, my name is Frank. I'm at the Peninsula. Room six
twelve. So give me a call when you can."" "Something is wrong.
Pierce probes, investigates, and then tumbles through a hole,
leaving behind a life driven by work to track down and help a woman
he has never met." The world he enters is one of escorts, websites,
sex, and secret passions. The beautiful Lilly is an object of
desire to thousands. To Pierce, she becomes the key that might fix
a broken life. But in pursuing Lilly, Pierce has entered a
landscape where his success and expertise mean nothing. He is a
mark, an outsider, and soon he is also the victim of astonishing
violence, the chief suspect in a murder case, and fighting for his
life against forces he can barely discern. (Source: Publisher)
Back
on the job after an involuntary leave of absence, LAPD homicide
detective Harry Bosch lands his first case: a Hollywood producer
found in the trunk of his Rolls-Royce, shot twice in the head. It
looks like "trunk music," a Mafia hit. The LAPD's organized crime
unit is oddly uninterested, but Harry thinks they're wrong. He
follows the money trail from the producer's office to Las Vegas,
where he quickly finds evidence of Mafia involvement. But something
about the case doesn't add up, and Harry follows a string of odd
clues - glitter in the producer's cuffs, an over-the-counter
medication in the Rolls's glovebox - in a different direction
entirely. Just when Harry thinks he's on firm ground, the bottom
falls out. Blindsided again and again, at odds with his superiors,
and overwhelmed by a romance that has cropped up in the middle of
the case, Harry is as off balance as he's ever been. (Source: Publisher)
At the foot of Angels Flight, an inclined railway in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, a lawyer
is found murdered on the eve of a landmark trial. Howard Elias's
lawsuits charging the LAPD with racism and brutality made him a
celebrity - even as his success earned him the hatred of nearly
every police officer in the city. When Harry Bosch is put in
charge of the team investigating Elias's murder he knows that his
colleagues are likely to be his chief suspects. He also knows
that the city's smoldering racial tensions could ignite if he
missteps. As he works night and day in the glare of a major media
event, Bosch struggles with a more personally urgent mystery:
trying to find out whether his wife's disappearance means she has
left him for good or fallen deeper into a dangerous addiction. On
streets filled with angry mobs, amid burning buildings and under
fire from rooftop snipers, Bosch must find the one answer that
will make sense of the case's strangely unconnected pieces -
exposing himself to grave danger in the hope of saving his job,
his marriage, and his city. (Source: Publisher)
| A Darkness More Than Night (First published 2000) | |
 The Barnes & Noble Review
Independent elements from several earlier books come seamlessly
together in Michael Connelly's ingenious, compelling novel, A
Darkness More than Night. This one features both Terry
McCaleb, last seen in the Edgar-nominated
Blood Work, and Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch, the haunted
hero of several of Connelly's finest novels. The lives of these
two damaged, all-too-human figures intersect in a typically
extravagant story that is at once a murder mystery, a legal
thriller, and a psychological drama of considerable subtlety and
power. The novel begins when McCaleb, an
FBI profiler forced into retirement following a successful heart
transplant, agrees to lend his expertise to a particularly
baffling murder investigation. The victim is Edward Gunn, an
alcoholic lowlife with a violent past. He was once arrested -- by
Harry Bosch -- for the murder of a Los Angeles prostitute but
managed, despite Harry's best efforts, to avoid prosecution.
McCaleb's analysis of the crime scene reveals a number of
anomalies: an unexplained head wound, a phrase ("Beware, beware,
God sees") written in medieval Latin, the replica of an owl
placed in the vicinity of the corpse. Following his instincts,
McCaleb locates mirror images of these arcane clues in a number
of paintings by Harry's namesake, the 15th-century Dutch master,
Hieronymous Bosch. Harry, meanwhile, is serving as
chief investigator and star witness in the sensational murder
trial of a world-famous Hollywood director and has no idea that
he's just become the primary suspect in an unrelated
investigation. As the trial progresses, it becomes increasingly
clear that Harry's testimony is critically important and that any
attempt to destroy his credibility will undermine the case
against a vicious, well-connected killer. Eventually, Harry learns about
McCaleb's suspicions and forces a confrontation. McCaleb takes a
second look at the accumulated evidence and begins to discern the
outlines of a very different scenario. As new revelations come
gradually into view, the disparate elements of the novel
coalesce, and the narrative moves with increasing urgency toward
a violent, thoroughly satisfying conclusion. Connelly is only a moderately
gifted stylist, but he is a devious, resourceful plotter and a
world-class storyteller. His new book generates the kind of
irresistible momentum that very few novelists ever manage to
achieve. At the same time, it offers empathetic portraits of two
memorably complex protagonists with more than their share of
ghosts, griefs, and personal demons to contend with. A
Darkness More than Night is an intelligent, compassionate,
unfailingly entertaining thriller. It deserves the success it is
doubtless about to achieve. --Bill Sheehan
Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com). Source: Barnes and Noble.com |
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