The Gospel According to Prisco

Angels Flight by Michael Connelly

It’s almost impossible to write reviews of a series that has so many novels in it when you are six or seven deep.  Essentially, you can’t cover new territory from your old reviews.  All I can do is say whether or not it’s gotten stronger or weaker.  Which is particularly problematic with the Harry Bosch novels.

Harry Bosch is a hard-boiled detective in Los Angeles.  I’m so glad I waited to read these novels until I came out here, because I appreciate them all the more.  And Connelly infuses the stories with a sense of historical imprint.  The OJ Trials, the earthquake that decimated the city in 1994, the Rodney King riots.  It helps to layer the novels, which are deftly written.  It’s such a strong series, but it’s also relatively of the whole world-weary gumshoe variety.  A smoking dick, who hates the rules and who hates corruption.  He’s just a man, with a badge, trying to do his job.  It’s not a cliche here though. 

It’s a beach read style novel, paperbacks that you load into your back pocket.  I would never buy a Connelly book in hardcover, because I don’t ever have that much fever for the series.  But I own most of them in paperback.  Because it’s a solid read, and I know it’s going to be good, and I know I’ll want to read the next one.  Even his Mickey Haller lawyer novels, and the stand alones, they’re all solid. 

And Angels Flight is no different, this time tackling a high-profile lawyer who was seemingly assassinated.  What makes it so fiery is that the lawyer made his career suing the LAPD in the early wake of OJ and Rodney King.  And that he was probably iced by a cop. 

It’s a great book, but only more so because of what came before it.  You have to start with Harry Bosch from the beginning, and if you like detective stuff, pick up The Black Echo.  It’s more of a LA Story, but it’s a quality read.

Trunk Music by Michael Connelly

I read on the toilet.  At work.  I go to the bathroom, pull a paperback out of my back pocket, and skim through ten or fifteen pages while I’m doing the two before zipping up and going back to work.  So I read an awful lot of beachread style paperbacks, fast food fiction.  I prefer series, so that way I always can purchase a new paperback to blaze through while I stink up the joint.  

This is book five in the Harry Bosch series.  It was one of those book series that I would always see people purchasing while I worked the Barnes and Horrible and think to myself, man, I should try that sometime.  But I never took the plunge until I moved out the California.  And I’m glad I waited.

The series was written starting in the eighties, and so it moves through Los Angeles during the times of the earthquakes, and the Rodney King verdict, and these events wash over the backdrop of an otherwise disposable detective tale. 

Harry Bosch is your typical textbook gritty homicide detective.  I mean, he’s the prototype for any sort of rule-breaking, yelling at your commanding officer, gunslinger riding in the Cutlass that you will find.  From his plaid sportscoat we see Lenny Briscoe and Sipowicz spring forth.  These are your typical throw-away paperback novels, stuff you’d find in a bargain bin or dollar bookstore.   And that’s what drew me to them.

The storytelling is interesting in that I live in the areas that he describes.  I drive the roads.  It’s the literary equivalent of the band shouting out the name of the city they’re playing in.  And I like shit like that.  Other than that, it’s pretty much an extended Law and Order.  I always use Law and Order to describe any sort of cop procedural, and it problem seems lazy, but for me, Law and Order sums up perfectly the problem and addictiveness of these stories.

Law and Order has been around forever, spinning off into countless versions, the cast constantly changing and fluctuating, but never changing the basic formula.  It’ll sponge off the headlines, changing the story into a movie of the week version of the top stories, but never getting too obscene or dirty.  They don’t include love storylines that often, because it has no place in the story. 

And so it goes with Harry Bosch.  He’s an interesting character in his absolute familiarity.  It’s like falling asleep in a bathtub.  There’s a certain comfort in its tepidity.  The stories have neat twists and occasional shockers, but other than that, it’s what you expect.  And so it makes for a great toilet read.  It’s pretty predictable, and you can easily put it down and pick it up again.