The man who was mistaken for a deer

‘And anything by Michael Connelly’ were the final words of advice from one of my best friends in discussing books to read one summer. I’ve been hooked ever since by a master of narrative tension, complex but believable plotting and three-dimensional characters. Luckily Connelly is a prolific author of detective and investigative fiction with a number of protagonists who sometimes appear in each other’s books. His latest novel maintains the same high standard and relentless forward impetus that keeps one turning the pages.

Hieronymous ‘Harry’ Bosch, a Vietnam veteran, has had a distinguished but somewhat bumpy career as a detective and is now deployed in the Open-Unsolved unit of the Los Angeles Police Department looking at old, cold murder cases. He is nearing retirement but remains an obsessive, thorough investigator whose sole distraction is his teenage daughter. He
has problems with authority, and is rightly cynical about the growing interaction between politics and policing in LA.