August 24, 13.28pm
Writers who cross over their characters from one book or series to another do so at their own peril: the results can often look clumsy or contrived and do little to enhance the status of either character.
Michael Connelly has previous in this respect. Jack McEvoy, the reporter at the heart of The Poet, pops up here and there in other works, while Terry McCaleb - forever fixed in my mind as Clint Eastwood after the movie adaptation - featured in A Darkness More than Night, which I found one of the less successful installments in the generally excellent Bosch chronicles, of which Echo Park is the 12th.
There is no great character collaboration in this book, but roughly a third of the way in, Bosch reads the record of an ex-con who was at one time or another represented by attorned "Mickey Haller", the protagonist in The Lincoln Lawyer, a book that in the UK at least has catapulted Connelly to a whole new stratospheric level of readership.
It was a tiny mention - not returned to - and entirely harmless. But it was also utterly irrelevant and it really, really pissed me off, and for about 30 pages quite put me off the book. I sat there wondering if this was Connelly nodding reassuringly to his army of new Richard-and-Judy-Bookclub readers: "Hey, here's Mickey. The Lincoln Lawyer. You're in the right place."
That's probably grossly unfair to Connelly, but there you have it. It annoyed me.
But it is minor gripe. Echo Park is a terrific addition to a series that is aging gracefully and showing few signs of trailing off into the sort of mediocrity that can be a real danger to a 12-book-old series.
Bosch is put on the trail of a serial killer who confesses to nine unsolved murders by an ambitious DA politico, Rick O'Shea - nicknamed Ricochet - and in the process is catapulted back into an unsolved case from his past. Working with Open-Unsolved partner Kiz Rider, Bosch is quickly forced to contemplate an unbearable truth: that a mistake made by himself and a former partner, the always hapless Jerry Edgar, may have prevented this serial killer from being nailed after his first murder.
Fans of conspiracy theory and tales of official corruption - and I am one - will find plenty here as the further Bosch delves into the case the murkier the waters of authority become, and soon enough the detective believes he senior officials are covering up a crime.
Cross-breeding aside this is a great novel. As befits a long-time crime beat reporter in LA, Connelly has a well-developed sense of how things play when the "Department goes bad", and he plots a thoroughly convincing novel and a typically deft mystery. After 11 previous encounters, there's little further to be developed in Bosch who, like Matthew Scudder, Dave Robicheaux and other serial detectives, is now set in his difficult ways.
But that doesn't matter a jot as long as Connelly continues to come up with the stories and handles the plot so well, Bosch is good for a few more sequels yet, although I won't be surprised if it's the Lincoln Lawyer rather than the True Detective who is next off the Connelly typewriter.http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/HB-31942/Echo-Park.htm