The Drop [Versión Kindle]

I started reading the latest Harry Bosch book last night. Finished it this morning, it's so enthralling.

The novel deals with two cases. Harry Boschs' nemesis Irvin Irving, ex-deputy police chief and city councillor, requests Harry Bosch to investigate the death of his son, George Irving, who apparently committed suicide by jumping from the seventh floor suite of a Hollywood hotel.

The other case resulted from a cold case discovery of DNA in a blood smear on the neck of a rape-murder victim shown to originate from a sex offender who was just 8 years old at the time.

The title 'the Drop' could be referring to the apparent suicide. It could also refer to 'DROP', 'Deferred Retirement Option Plan', which is the reason why Harry Bosch had returned to the LAPD to the Open-Unsolved Unit. The novel opens with Harry Bosch being told he had a 4 year extension of his second and final contract, meaning that he'd be permanently retired in 39 months time (Michael Connelly has indicated that that will be the end of the Bosch series), so that leaves plenty of time for further novels in the series.

I can hardly wait...

This is another excellent book about Harry Bosch, my favorite LAPD homicide investigator. The title of the book may throw the reader off though.
The DROP in this book refers to the Deferred Retirement Option Program of the LAPD. Harry is still working in the Unsolved Cases unit and is at the mandatory retirement age and had put in for a DROP. Through it is not the focal point of the story, it does tie in to Harry's mindset throughout the book.

Harry and his partner Chu get assigned to a cold case of a woman who was murdered several years prior. The DNA evidence on the case points to Clayton, Pell a convicted sex-offender. This would be a slam dunk except that when the crime happened, Pell was only eight years old.

Before Harry can investigate further he is told from the people upstairs (his former partner Kiz Rider) that he must drop everything and devote his entire effort to investigating the apparent suicide of a councilman's son. This brings up an issue for Harry. Firstly, he does not like the councilman at all and is anxious to investigate the other case. He is told that the councilman's son is crucial because the councilman is responsible for department budget cuts and handling this case could help the LAPD get some of their funding back.

Of course Harry will do things his way and will find ways to bypass instructions and work on both cases at once. At times through the book Harry's actions will alienate those around him, especially his partner Chu and his new love interest (a social worker helping Clayton Pell). The book never gets boring and Harry's relentless and methodical pursuit to get to the truth is prevalent throughout. Even his daughter Madeline seems to pitch in for some good advice and could play a bigger role in future books to come.

I give the book four stars and would have rated it higher except that I felt a little uncomfortable with Harry pursuing a relationship with the social worker for Clayton Pell.

Michael Connelly used to be among my favorite writers in this genre. His earliest novels (Concrete Blonde, Trunk Music, etc.) really started me down the path of being a voracious consumer of mystery fiction. Unfortunately, he continues his downward trajectory with 'The Drop', and I think that's the last one I'll waste my time reading. He's apparently content to rest on his laurels, act as a lazy professor emeritus of the genre, and write gushing blurbs about other writers' books (which I don't trust).

This book brings the laziness to a new level. Connelly combines what appears to be 2 longer short stories into a single novel. In 'The Drop', 2 cases are assigned to Harry Bosch almost simultaneously, and he solves both of them in pretty short order. Of course, there's really no connection between them, so having them in the same book really doesn't work, except for 'padding' purposes.

What does work in the book is that the story lines for both cases are interesting and probably could have been developed into standalone novels by an author who was interested in doing a little work. The procedural stuff seems to be pretty solid, and the conclusions to both crimes are logical. What doesn't work?

- A great character, Harry Bosch, is wasted. Really no background is explained, nothing in his rich past in the series is mined to make the novel more interesting and to help the reader understand his motives.
- The dialogue is wooden. What used to be a strength for Connelly is no longer there.
- The 2 cases just didn't have synergy. There was no reason for them to be in the same book.
- The writing was pedestrian, with absolutely nothing to recommend it.

Anyone starting to read Connelly with this book ought to ask 'what's the big deal with this guy?'. Anyone wanting to start reading him should begin in the beginning and go back to his earliest novels.