Showing results by author "Michael Connelly"

At the end of a long, dark night Detectives Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch cross paths for the very first time. Detective Renée Ballard is working the graveyard shift again and returns to Hollywood Station in the early hours only to find that an older man has snuck in and is rifling through old file cabinets. The intruder is none other than legendary LAPD detective Harry Bosch, working a cold case that has gotten under his skin. Ballard kicks him out, but eventually Bosch persuades her to help, and she relents.

For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch - hero, maverick, nighthawk - the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal. The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell.

The Dollmaker was the name of the serial killer who had stalked Los Angeles ruthlessly, leaving grisly calling cards on the faces of his victims. Now, with a single faultless shot, Harry Bosch thinks he has ended the city's nightmare.

A compelling thriller introducing a driven young detective trying to prove herself in the LAPD. Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor.

Terry McCaleb's enforced quiet lifestyle on the island of Catalina is a far cry from the hectic excitement of his former role as an FBI profiler. However when small-time criminal Edward Gunn is found dead, McCaleb becomes embroiled in a disturbing and complex case leading him to cross the path of Harry Bosch. This infamous detective has always teetered on the brink of darkness in order to get inside the head of the killer. Is it possible he has stepped across that finely drawn line and embraced darkness?

Our hero is Jack McEvoy, a Rocky Mountain News crime-beat reporter. As the story opens, Jack's twin brother, a Denver homicide detective, has just killed himself. Or so it seems. But when Jack begins to investigate the phenomenon of police suicides, a disturbing pattern emerges, and soon suspects that a serial murderer is at work.

The shooting of a Chinese liquor store owner in LA brings Harry Bosch back to the Rodney King riots and the moment a stranger gave a young cop sanctuary. Now the debt must be repaid, and Harry soon discovers the old man's death was no ordinary holdup.

Harry attacked his commanding officer and is suspended indefinitely, pending a psychiatric evaluation. At first he resists the LAPD shrink, but finally recognizes that something is troubling him and has for a long time. In 1961, when Harry was 12, his mother, a prostitute, was brutally murdered with no one ever accused of the crime.

Harry is back, assigned to the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit with his former cop ally and partner, Kizmin Rider. These detectives are the Closers. They are thrown into a politically sensitive and dangerous case when a white supremacist is connected to the 1988 murder of a mixed-race girl. The police department has changed, but one thing hasn't--Harry's nemesis, Irving. The former deputy chief has been pushed from power and given a virtually meaningless new role. Full of vengeance, Irving calls Harry a "retread".

An old case from his LAPD past threatens Bosch's reputation in a gripping new thriller. Harry Bosch is back as a volunteer working cold cases for the San Fernando police and is called out to a local drug store where a young pharmacist has been murdered. Bosch and the town's three-person detective squad sift through the clues, which lead into the dangerous big-business world of prescription drug abuse. Meanwhile, an old case from Bosch's LAPD days comes back to haunt him.

A young woman finds herself caught up in a scam which may cost her the one thing she values more than her life.... Cassie Black has been lured back to the criminal profession she gave up--robbing gamblers of their winnings--by a proposition that is just too good to miss. The job goes as planned except that the target has too much money. It can only mean someone very powerful is going to be very angry indeed. Cassie finds herself on the run from a killer who seems to know her every move in advance.

Back on the job after an involuntary leave of absence, LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch is ready for a challenge. But his first case is a little more than he bargained for. It starts with the body of a Hollywood producer in the trunk of a Rolls-Royce, shot twice in the head at close range - what looks like "trunk music", a Mafia hit.

In tough times, crime is one of the few things that still pay, but if defence attorney Mickey Haller was expecting an uptick in business during the economic downturn, the reality is a different story. Even people needing legal representation to keep them out of jail have to make cut-backs, it seems.

In 1993 Harry Bosch was assigned the case of a missing person, Marie Gesto. The young woman was never found--dead or alive--and the case has haunted Bosch ever since. Thirteen years later Bosch is in the Open Unsolved Unit when he gets a call from the DA's office. A man accused of two killings is willing to confess to several other murders in a deal to avoid the death penalty. One of his victims, he says, is Marie Gesto.

When down-at-heel lawyer Mickey Haller gets the news that his old colleague Jerry Vincent has died, he also gets an unexpected windfall. Jerry had left instructions that Mickey should inherit all of his clients - putting Mickey's stalled career back on track at a stroke. Not only that, but Vincent was about to go to bat for Walter Elliot, the Hollywood mogul accused of brutally slaying his wife and her lover, in a trial that promises big fees and an even bigger place in the media spotlight.

Narcotics officer Cal Moore's orders were to look into the city's latest drug killing. Instead, he ends up in a motel room with his head in several pieces and a suicide note stuffed in his back pocket.

Henry Pierce has a whole new life - new apartment, new telephone, new telephone number. But the first time he checks his messages, he discovers that someone had the number before him. The messages on his line are for a woman named Lilly, and she is in some kind of serious trouble. Pierce is inexorably drawn into Lilly's world, and it's unlike any world he's ever known. It is a night-time world of escort services, websites, sex, and secret identities.

Mickey Haller gets the text, "Call me ASAP - 187," and the California penal code for murder immediately gets his attention. Murder cases have the highest stakes and the biggest paydays, and they always mean Haller has to be at the top of his game. When Mickey learns that the victim was his own former client, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow path, he knows he is on the hook for this one. He soon finds out that she was back in LA and back in the life. Far from saving her, Mickey may have been the one who put her in danger.

Thanks to a heart transplant, former FBI agent Terrell McCaleb is enjoying a quiet retirement, renovating the fishing boat he lives on in Los Angeles Harbor. But McCaleb's calm seas turn choppy when a story in the "What Happened To?" column of the LA Times brings him face-to-face with the sister of the woman whose heart now beats in his chest.

They're called Lincoln Lawyers: the bottom of the legal food chain, the criminal defence attorneys who operate out of the back of a Lincoln car, travelling between the courthouses of Los Angeles county to take whatever cases the system throws in their path.