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A review by lesserjoke
Lost Light by Michael Connelly
3.0
This Harry Bosch title is told in first-person narration, which is a slight but noticeable deviation from the third-person-limited perspective of the last eight novels. It's not immediately clear why the new POV has been adopted, although it may have to do with the change in the protagonist's lifestyle after (spoiler alert for the previous volume) he abruptly quit the LAPD at the end of City of Bones. The former police detective is still an investigator -- with an official PI license, though for now he's just looking into open cases from his own career and not taking on clients -- but he's operating without the safety net and institutional clout that the department has always given his activities in the past.
The plot that unfolds is quintessential Bosch. He can't let go of the unsolved murder of a young woman everyone else has forgotten, but his poking around stirs up the powerful interests of the FBI and an anti-terrorism taskforce, who try to pressure him into dropping it. In the process he's beaten and taken to an off-books "black site," and while some of these agents are clearly dirty, it feels like a sharper critique of law enforcement overall than author Michael Connelly has typically provided before. Writing in 2003, he appears particularly concerned about the jurisdictional overreach that followed 9/11, and I'll be interested to see how that thread develops over the remainder of the series. (It has certainly aged better than a scene of early internet research here, pulling every news item marked with keyword 'terrorist.')
None of the twists in the investigation is all that shocking, and a big development in Harry's home life seems overly obvious in advance, even if it hadn't been spoiled for me by the Amazon streaming adaptation frontloading it into the backstory of its pilot episode. But what's left is a solid enough story in an interesting new key for its champion, and a major milestone along his personal journey.
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The plot that unfolds is quintessential Bosch. He can't let go of the unsolved murder of a young woman everyone else has forgotten, but his poking around stirs up the powerful interests of the FBI and an anti-terrorism taskforce, who try to pressure him into dropping it. In the process he's beaten and taken to an off-books "black site," and while some of these agents are clearly dirty, it feels like a sharper critique of law enforcement overall than author Michael Connelly has typically provided before. Writing in 2003, he appears particularly concerned about the jurisdictional overreach that followed 9/11, and I'll be interested to see how that thread develops over the remainder of the series. (It has certainly aged better than a scene of early internet research here, pulling every news item marked with keyword 'terrorist.')
None of the twists in the investigation is all that shocking, and a big development in Harry's home life seems overly obvious in advance, even if it hadn't been spoiled for me by the Amazon streaming adaptation frontloading it into the backstory of its pilot episode. But what's left is a solid enough story in an interesting new key for its champion, and a major milestone along his personal journey.
Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter