A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch)

A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch)
by Michael Connelly

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Book Summary Information

Author: Michael Connelly
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-03-01
ISBN: 0446667900
Number of pages: 488
Publisher: Vision
Product features:

ISBN13: 9780446667906
Condition: New
Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch)

Book Review: That's All, Fowkkes !
Summary: 4 Stars

"A Darkness More Than Night" is Michael Connelly's tenth book, his second to feature Terry McCaleb and was first published in 1999. McCaleb, who made his first appearance in "Blood Work", is a former FBI Agent who retired after a heart attack. He lives on Catalina Island, runs a fishing charter and has now married Graciela Rivers. The couple met when Graciela asked him to look into her sister's murder, some three years previously. Since then, McCaleb hasn't been involved in any investigation - until Jaye Winston comes to visit. Winston, a Sheriff's detective, requests his help with a murder she's investigating - something she terms Terry's "sort of thing". Edward Gunn, the victim, was killed in his apartment in what appears to have been a very carefully constructed murder. Studying the case file, McCaleb notes some of the more significant features, including the message written on the victim's gag. However, he spots something on the crime scene video that Winston seems to have overlooked. A hand-painted plastic owl - roughly two feet in height - had been placed on the shelves in such a way that it 'watched' as Gunn died.

A background check on Gunn shows that he was 'known' to the police : he had a record for 'small-time' crimes, including soliciting for prostitution and drink-driving. He had also been questioned by the LAPD about the murder of a prostitute six years previously. However, the department reluctantly dropped the case and wrote it off as self-defence. McCaleb notices that the lead detective on the case was a man he'd once worked with : Harry Bosch. McCaleb decides to contact him, initially to see if he has any thoughts about Gunn's murder. The investigation, however, puts a very different slant on things and ensures the two men will be talking again.

Bosch, who makes his seventh appearance in this book, is already a well-established character. Orphaned at the age of twelve, he is the son of a prostitute who named him after the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. After serving in Viet-Nam, he returned home and joined the LAPD. He was once a member of the elite Robbery-Homicide Department, but following an IAD investigation was demoted to the Hollywood Division. While McCaleb is investigating the Gunn killing, Bosch is in court helping to prosecute a high-profile case. The defendant, David Storey, is a very famous (and notorious) film director, charged with the murder of a young actress. Jody Krementz's body had been found in her own bed, though it was believed the pose was staged so that it would look like accidental death. Storey is joined at the defence table by John Reason Fowkkes, his lawyer, and Rudy Tafero, his PI. Tafero was once a LAPD cop who, like Bosch, worked out of Hollywood. He retired after twenty years, went private and took out a bail bonds licence.

There's some history between the two lead characters. Although this is the first time they've shared the spotlight in print, this isn't the first time they've met. McCaleb was setting up the Bureau's BSS and VICAP outpost in LA when Bosch - then still at RHD - asked for his help with a profile for a killer. The victim had been a Mexican girl, in her early teens. Never identified, Bosch christened her 'Cielo Azul' and McCaleb named his daughter 'Cielo' in her honour. Connelly subsequently wrote a short story about the case, which has now been included in the collection "Dangerous Women".

I'm not entirely sure dividing the action between Bosch and McCaleb really helped the story - I would certainly have liked Bosch to feature more, given that I think he's a stronger character than McCaleb. Connelly has nearly overdone it with the number of cameos - Jack McEvoy and Brass Doran, from "The Poet", make brief appearances, while there's a nod to Thelma Kibble from "Void Moon". Meanwhile, both Bosch and McCaleb bring a number of their own 'support characters' it was nice to see Teresa Corazón again. Harry's investigation into Gunn was never covered in any book, though it did form the backdrop to "The Last Coyote". (Harry's Lieutenant at the time, Harvey "98" Pounds, had interfered with Gunn's questioning - as a result, Harry lost his temper and pushed his bureaucratic boss head first through an office window. "The Last Coyote" deals with his subsequent suspension). As a result, this is far from the best place to start if you haven't read anything by him before - I'd recommend reading at least "Blood Work" and "The Last Coyote" first. If you are a fan of Connelly's, though, you should enjoy this - the more you've read by him, the more you'll get out of it.

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Summary of A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch)

Terry McCaleb, the retired FBI agent who starred in the bestseller "Blood Work," is asked by the LAPD to help them investigate aseries of murders that have them baffled. They are the kind of ritualized killings McCaleb specialized in solving with the FBI, and he is reluctantly drawn from his peaceful new life back into the horror and excitement of tracking down a terrifying homicidal maniac. More horrifying still, the suspect who seems to fit the profile that McCaleb develops is someone he has known and worked with in the past: LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch.

When a sheriff's detective shows up on former FBI man Terry McCaleb's Catalina Island doorstep and requests his help in analyzing photographs of a crime scene, McCaleb at first demurs. He's newly married (to Graciela, who herself dragged him from retirement into a case in Blood Work), has a new baby daughter, and is finally strong again after a heart transplant. But once a bloodhound, always a bloodhound. One look at the video of Edward Gunn's trussed and strangled body puts McCaleb back on the investigative trail, hooked by two details: the small statue of an owl that watches over the murder scene and the Latin words "Cave Cave Dus Videt," meaning "Beware, beware, God sees," on the tape binding the victim's mouth.

Gunn was a small-time criminal who had been questioned repeatedly by LAPD Detective Harry Bosch in the unsolved murder of a prostitute, most recently on the night he was killed. McCaleb knows the tense, cranky Bosch (Michael Connelly's series star--see The Black Echo, The Black Ice, et al.) and decides to start by talking to him. But Bosch has time only for a brief chat. He's a prosecution witness in the high-profile trial of David Storey, a film director accused of killing a young actress during rough sex. By chance, however, McCaleb discovers an abstruse but concrete link between the scene of Gunn's murder and Harry Bosch's name:

"This last guy's work is supposedly replete with owls all over the place. I can't pronounce his first name. It's spelled H-I-E-R-O-N-Y-M-U-S. He was Netherlandish, part of the northern renaissance. I guess owls were big up there."
McCaleb looked at the paper in front of him. The name she had just spelled seemed familiar to him.
"You forgot his last name. What's his last name?"
"Oh, sorry. It's Bosch. Like the spark plugs."

Bosch fits McCaleb's profile of the killer, and McCaleb is both thunderstruck and afraid--thunderstruck that a cop he respects might have committed a horrendous murder and afraid that Bosch may just be good enough to get away with it. And when Bosch finds out (via a mysterious leak to tabloid reporter Jack McEvoy, late of Connelly's The Poet) that he's being investigated for murder, he's furious, knowing that Storey's defense attorney may use the information to help get his extravagantly guilty client off scot-free.

It's the kind of plot that used to make great Westerns: two old gunslingers circling each other warily, each of them wondering if the other's gone bad. But there's more than one black hat in them thar hills, and Connelly masterfully joins the plot lines in a climax and denouement that will leave readers gasping but satisfied. --Barrie Trinkle

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