Blood Work
by Michael Connelly
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael ConnellyEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-10-01
ISBN: 0446602620
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Book Reviews of Blood Work
Book Review: Always Watch Over Your Shoulder for the Following Sea
Summary: 5 Stars
"Blood Work" (1998), is, I believe, the seventh novel published by the bestselling, outstanding American mystery author Michael Connelly. It is a standalone mystery, of superior quality, that follows six of his earliest and greatest, including his other riveting standalone, The Poet. Connelly is, of course, widely known for his bestselling Harry Bosch series of mystery novels. That series, Los Angeles-set police procedurals, looks at life on the "noir" side; Connelly is a former journalist, a crime beat writer for the Los Angeles Times, who certainly earned his spurs in murder while earning his daily bread.
The book at hand, which is extraordinarily cunning and well-made, is, like most of the author's work, set in Los Angeles. Terrell (Terry) McCaleb, retired FBI agent, used to call his work with the agency "blood work." It consisted of heading all investigations of serial murders in the LA area. Then a heart condition forced him into early retirement. Now, post heart transplant, he is living quietly on his boat The Following Sea, moored in the LA harbor, doing a lot of fishing and slowly trying to fix it up so that he can bring it back to his hometown on Catalina Island. (The boat was inherited from his father, who also named it.) But the former detective's calm seas turn choppy when an LA Times story brings Graciela Rivers, a beautiful nurse, to his boat, to tell him the story of her sister's unsolved recent murder. And, before you know it, McCaleb agrees to take up the case, against doctor's orders and his own better judgment.
You will find some of Connelly's most beautiful, resonant writing in this book. He explains the meaning of The Following Sea thus:
"There is something known as the following sea, or a following sea....A sea is a wave. You know how you hear on surf reports that the seas are two to four feet or whatever?...Okay, well a following sea is the one you have to watch out for. It's the one that comes up behind a vessel. You don't see it coming. It hits you from behind and swamps you. Sinks you. The rule is that if you're running in following seas, you've just got to be moving faster than they are. Stay ahead of them. He named the boat that because it was like a reminder. You know, always watch over your shoulder. It was something he always said to me when I was growing up."
Or the writer tells us his dual meaning for "blood work." Most of us know; have been forced to know, that it means various tests done on blood withdrawn from our veins. But Connelly says:
"When he [McCaleb] was an agent, he had carried with him a bottomless reservoir of rage for the men he hunted. He had seen firsthand what they had done and he wanted them to pay for the horrible manifestations of their fantasies. Blood debts had to be paid in blood. That was why in the bureau's serial killer unit the agents called what they did `blood work.'"
The book also has Connelly's usual excellent narrative and descriptive writing, and snappy dialogue, and is informed by his deep, accurate knowledge of police work. The writer explicates his love of jazz as he goes. He writes with great knowledge of, and love for, Los Angeles, his adopted home town: You could pretty much use his works instead of a road map. And it, too, clearly follows in the footsteps of earlier outstanding hardboiled Los Angeles authors Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, but add the further ingredients of a police procedural.
At one point, we are told that the protagonist detective is looking for the "telling detail," in order to figure out the gnarly plot with which he is presented: Connelly has repeatedly said, in his public appearances and non-fiction work, that he considers the nosing out of the telling detail to be the most important job of the journalist and the novelist.
In the book, we again meet some of Connelly's favorite characters: some we have met before; some we will surely meet again, and some we have both met before and will meet again. The author also sneaks some of the favorite ploys he used in his earlier books into its pages. He mentions the LA-famous father and son defense lawyers, Mickey Haller, Sr. and Jr. Keisha Russell, Crime Reporter at the Los Angeles Times. The Poet, malefactor of the book that bears the same name, THE POET. Connelly calls out Clint Eastwood, who, we will know, made a movie of this book, under the same title, Blood Work. (A good film, though I'm not crazy about some of the changes Eastwood made). And, of course, the characters in this book discuss the possibilities of making a movie of this book. And then there is FBI Agent Rachel Walling. At one point, early in this book's pages, our protagonist tells a curious cab driver that he, the detective, is no one. This phrase will come back to haunt our former FBI agent. The writer even manages to sneak in an homage to James Lee Burke: at one point, his protagonist, is wearing a "Robicheaux Dock and Bait Shop" t-shirt.
Connelly is a wonderful writer, my favorite among American mystery authors, and I've read all his books save The Scarecrow, and his most recent, The Reversal. (Like many other readers, I imagine, I generally prefer his series works to his standalones: like many other writers, his mysteries seem more powerful if they are filtered through the sensibilities of his detective protagonist.) However, his recent standalones, SCARECROW, The Brass Verdict: A Novel (Harry Bosch), and The Lincoln Lawyer, have all been #1 New York Times Bestsellers. Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers, his collected non-fiction journalism, was also a New York Times bestseller, as most of his previous standalones have been, too. Obviously, a lot of readers go for his work in any shape or form, and the man always rewards the reading.
Summary of Blood Work
When Graciella Rivers steps onto his boat, ex-FBI agent Terrell McCaleb has no idea he's about to come out of retirement. He's recuperating from a heart transplant and avoiding anything stressful. But when Graciella tells him the way her sister Gloria was murdered it leaves Terry no choice. Now the man with the new heart vows to take down a predator without a soul. For Gloria's killer shatters every rule that McCaleb ever learned in his years with the Bureau--as McCaleb gets no more second chances at life... and just one shot at the truth. Blood Work is now a major motion picture from Warner Bros. directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. The movie also stars Anjelica Huston and Jeff Daniels. Blood Work hit bestseller lists nationwide, including those of the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Dallas Morning News. It has over 900,000 paperback copies in print.Michael Connelly has been attracting fans by the droves with his hard-boiled, edgy thrillers. A former crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Connelly combines a poet's ear for language with a deep understanding of the criminal mind to create dark, dramatic stories that raise the thriller genre to a new level.
In Blood Work, Connelly introduces a new character, Terry McCaleb, who was a top man at the FBI until a heart ailment forced his early retirement. Now he lives a quiet life, nursing his new heart and restoring the boat on which he lives in Los Angeles Harbor. Although he isn't looking for any excitement, when Graciela Rivers asks him to investigate her sister Gloria's death, her story hooks him immediately: the new heart beating in McCaleb's chest is Gloria's.
As McCaleb investigates the evidence in the case, the suspected randomness of the crime gives way to an unsettling suspicion of a twisted intelligence behind the murder. Soon McCaleb finds himself on the trail of a killer more horrifying than anything he ever encountered before.
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