Thursday, November 27, 2014

Book Review - The Burning Room

This is the latest effort in the Bosch series. It has been 2 years since we last saw him in "The Black Box". In the meantime, Michael Connelly has been busy with an Amazon sponsored television series and it shows. This book seems to have been written to fulfill a contract. It does not have the usual Harry Bosch tension and attitude. Instead, he is cast in the role of a mentor to a young, female detective. We get to see the softer side of Harry but somehow it just doesn't seem like he's the same guy. He's counting the days until his DROP contract runs out and is more introspective than we have ever seen him as he approaches retirement.

Harry is still on the cold case group and he is investigating an old shooting case with a Mexican American female detective who was recently promoted. Unknown to Harry, she has an agenda to continue an unofficial investigation of an apartment fire and the two cases become joined by circumstances.

One of the things that was missing was that characters introduced in "The Black Box" do not appear in this book. It's as if his relationship with his girlfriend and the new detective in the internal investigation division did not exist. And remember, we never did learn the motivation of her reasons to follow him to Bakersfield in "The Black Box". I was hoping that story line would continue, or at least be explained.

All in all, not the best of the series.

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