Lost Light - Michael Connelly

You have to give Michael Connelly credit for not writing the same book over and over again. After establishing his Harry Bosch series, he’s made a habit of alternating Bosch novels with stand-alones (although all the stand-alones eventually tie in to some extent with the Bosch novels). Nor is he averse to trying something different within his most successful series. In LOST LIGHT, the ninth Harry Bosch novel, the narration switches from third person to first person, and Bosch is no longer a cop but rather a private detective, having retired from the LAPD. He doesn’t really have a client in this novel. Instead he’s working for himself, trying to solve a case in which he was involved four years earlier, the murder of a young woman that eventually tied in with a daring armed robbery that netted two million dollars being used in the making of a movie.

Of course, if you’ve read Connelly’s work before, you know things are going to get even more complicated than that before Bosch untangles everything. The FBI gets involved. There’s a terrorism angle. Bosch wrestles with some personal dilemmas. While all this is going on, Connelly gradually peels back the numerous layers of plot, throwing in some particularly ingenious twists, until he comes to a satisfying conclusion.

I think I like third person cop Bosch a little better than first person PI Bosch, but either way the books are top-notch, and LOST LIGHT is no exception. It ends in such a way that I want to read the next book in the series right away, but I’m probably going to hold off for a while so that I won’t get burned out on the series like I did a couple of years ago.