The Drop: Harry Bosch, Book 15

I am giving The Drop 5 stars as I Have read all of the Bosch Books with the exception of this one and I amsure it will be just as good as all of the others when I get to read it.

Harry Bosch is back from early retirement and has rejoined the department through the DROP program. The program allows him to re-engage as an officer for up to 60 months depending on the review boards findings. Harry is granted 39 months.He is back working in the Open-Unsolved Cases division, The Cold Cases. He and his partner David Chu, are good at what they do and look forward to the beginning of the week when the L.T. hands out the new assignments. The case that Bosch and Chu gets is twenty-two years old, a young 19 year old college student was found sexually assaulted, tortured and left for dead. Due to the new science the case was sent back to the lab for DNA testing on a blood sample that was smeared on the girls neck. It turns out the blood match gets a hit with a young man, Clayton Pell, who happens to be living in a half way house for sex offenders as part of his parole from prison. The only problem is that Pell would have been eight years old when the 19 year old college coed was murdered. How could an eight year old kid do that?The case seemed simple until that point came up. But now to make matters worse another case enters into the picture. A jumper has committed suicide at a local upscale hotel. To make matters worse he is the son of a prominent City Councilman, the most powerful City Councilman, and one that doesn't like the LAPD. Harry's phone rings and his friend Kiz Rider from the Chiefs office tells him that the Councilman has requested that Harry be assigned to the case as the lead investigator. Harry doesn't like the idea because he works cold cases not current cases. But he is given no choice.There is bad blood between Harry and the Councilman from when the Councilman was on the police force himself. Harry asks why the councilman wants him on the investigation and is told it's because Harry treats all cases with the highest regard, complete integrity and let's the case go were it needs to go to get the complete truth.Now the story begins. Detectives Bosch and Chu are under the microscope with this murder. But they also have their Cold Case to solve. They work both side by side and that makes some people unhappy. Also Bosch doesn't include Chu in everything and that makes him unhappy.Add to all of this Harry's daughter and their relationships and then to further complicate things add a woman who comes into Harry's life who he is attracted to, but they seem to be polar opposites.How will it all turn out. Well true to form Connelly keeps the stories moving, little bits of info keep popping up at the most strategic times and love is trying to find it's way to the surface but things are complicated that. On top of all of this there is a 'leak' in the department and facts of the Councilman's sons investigation keep getting out. Who is the mole leaking the story and why?Well all of this is well written, it is fast paced, exciting and you won't want to put it down. I read it on break, over lunch, during breakfast and gave up sleep because I wanted to know how it was going to end. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and feel that you will as well.Enjoy!

First off: the title. The `Drop' is the Deferred Retirement Option Plan. Harry has been given three years before he will be forced to retire from the LAPD and he wants to make the most of the time available. He is working two cases--a murder (or is it a suicide?) at the Chateau Marmont, the victim a son of a councilman who has asked for Harry to work the case. He and Harry have a history and it's not clear why a person with a grudge would ask his antagonist to investigate the death of his son. Presumably because Harry is tenacious and will follow the case to a conclusion, wherever it leads . . . but where is this leading and is the councilman an evil, dark eminence or is he more sinned against than sinning?The other case is an open murder case from decades earlier. The blood of a sexual predator is found on the body of a victim. There's just one problem: the predator would have been 8 years old at the time of the woman's murder. He could not have committed the crime, but how did his blood get there?Harry solves both cases and, along the way, deals with a loose-lipped partner and three women: his daughter Maddie, his former partner Kiz and his new love interest, Hannah Stone. The Connelly magic comes from the subtle ways in which Harry's professional life and personal life are commingled. Harry's loving but sad heart sits at the core of the narrative and the revelations of the cases' mysteries unfold with the realizations that both animate and darken Harry's mind and spirit.Ultimately, The Drop is a procedural, but one of a different sort than usual. When we think of `police procedurals' we often think of technical details--how does one fingerprint a body that has been in the water for a long time? What are the state-of-the-art techniques and technologies for eavesdropping? Here, however, the narrative is an administrative procedural--how do the pieces of the LAPD fit together? How do they articulate with Council politics? What compromises are forced on those who rise in these respective organizations? How do you solve crimes, protect your flanks, keep enemies at bay and still be able to face yourself in the mirror each morning? This is a different aspect of novelistic realism and Connelly has mastered it. He knows all of the organizations, all of the acronyms, the ways of the chain of command and the ways in which the police stations are divided into pods for different forms of investigation and the multitude of legal steps between arrest and execution.The Drop seems to end about fifty pages early, as the mysteries are solved, but then we follow Harry through all of the procedural steps which resolve the cases legally, clarify his personal relationships and leave him, standing alone, looking out in the distance, into the dark, from his home's back deck. By then we learn that `the drop' has multiple meanings within the story and that what might have ended in a celebration has instead ended with a cold realization of the way things are.

未解決事件が相手ということで全般を通して激しいドンパチはなく静かで、ある意味想像通りな展開。もう本が終わっちゃうよ、というころボッシュらしいハードボイルドになってしまう。そして最後は余りにもひどい事件に重くどんよりとした気持ちに。High Jingo な部分は最後まで展開が読めず、タイトルの『The DROP』ようにボッシュ自身の進退や人間関係にも影響することで、シリーズを見守るファンには必読。ちなみに個人的にDavid Chu役は眞栄田郷敦くんで読んでますw

What a treat it is when a new Michael Connelly book is published. The Drop is one of the Harry Bosch series. Bosch is a veteran cop in the LAPD, currently working in the Open-Unsolved crime unit (often called the "cold case" unit). Together with his partner the much younger David Chu, he is given cases to investigate when DNA or other forensic testing on samples from an old crime match up with entries in modern databases. One such case is given to Bosch and Chu at the start of The Drop. It's a puzzling case because the blood found on the neck of a young woman's body found 20 years ago, matches that of a sex offender who was only 8 years old at the time. Bosch and Chu are given the job of finding out whether there has been contamination during sample collection, or if not, what is going on.Before they can start their investigation, Bosch is pulled off the case and put onto another one by none other than the chief of police himself, via Bosch's old partner Kiz Rider, who now works as the chief's aide. A man's body has been found on the pavement outside a famous LA hotel. The corpse is that of George Irving, son of Bosch's old enemy and almost-nemesis, Irvin Irving, who had to retire from the police force but is now a powerful councilman who controls police budgets. To say there is no love lost between the two men is an understatement, but Rider has told Irving Snr that Bosch is the most principled detective she knows, because for Bosch "everyone counts or nobody counts". Hence, Bosch will find out whether Irving Jr committed suicide, as the investigating cops believe, or if there is another explanation for his death - the options seeming to be either an accidental fall over the balcony or murder.Bosch would rather carry on his cold-case investigation as he has little time for high politics, yet has to comply with the order of the chief. He tries to carry out both investigations in parallel; one of the themes of the novel is the excessive resource and pressure to solve the current case, and the total lack of interest by the police authorities in the older case, that of an "unimportant" person. This theme deepens and darkens as more pages are turned.As well as the two investigations, Bosch is in conflict with his partner Chu, who is immature and nervy. The two men fall out quite badly, not least because Bosch always keeps things to himself and has an autocratic style. In his personal life, Bosch is well-established in his life with Maddie, his 15-year-old daughter; their relationship is superficially laconic but close, as Maddie continues to be determined to be a cop like her father after she graduates from school. However, Bosch has to decide on whether or not to take "the drop" he has been offered, which is three more years in the force, after he is past official retirement age.There are other themes and subplots to this novel which I won't go into here. If you've read Connelly before, I would not want to provide too much of an account of the events in the book, which would only be likely to spoil your enjoyment. If you haven't, I would not recommend starting with this book as there is quite a bit of assumed knowledge about the characters and past events. (Start with the first novel in the series, The Black Echo, and see if you aren't hooked!).Connelly always delivers for his legions of readers, though he has gone through a couple of slight dips earlier in the Bosch series. The Drop (which could refer either to Bosch's final retirement date or to the fate of George Irving) is a gripping book in which one simply has to follow along behind Bosch's driven, focused actions in order to find out how both investigations turn out. It is replete with the tough poetic turns of phrase that characterise Bosch and his self-appointed mission, to stand up for those who no longer have anyone to stand up for them. The last part of the book is a significant shift in tone from the rest - where in the hands of another author the reader (this one, anyway!) might have found it hard to continue, Connelly is almost too reticent about what he's describing. Although I was grateful for this, the denouement of the cold-case investigation was less dramatic and slightly more flat than it could have been. The Irving case is more sharply drawn, and one can sense the author's enjoyment of his political twists and turns towards its culmination. What's next for Bosch? I'll be eagerly awaiting his next appearance, as usual.

Harry Bosch is in the open unsolved unit and gets two cases to solve, one is the former chiefs son as possibly taken his own life. The former chief wants Harry to lead the investigation, its a year the former chief is seeking re-election.Sadly the chief son does take his own life the former chief is irrate he thinks there is a cover-up.Case number 2 is about a serial killer one of the victims survives the attack, they eventually track down the killer, the survives gets himself arrested for the purpose of getting his own back ...... Great book.

The Drop is the seventeenth Harry Bosch novel and once again shows that the series is going from strength to strength. After the excellent novel The Reversal featuring Harry Bosch and Micky Haller in a shared role Michael Connelly reverts back to a full Harry Bosch novel and the result is a very, very good book.The Drop features two main plots with two cases getting equal time. The first is a cold case hit. Harry is handed a case with a new DNA match. The murder and a rape of a young women has gone unsolved for years but now the Open Unsolved Unit have made a DNA match and a suspect has been named. The DNA matches a convicted rapist however in a twist the suspect would have been just eight years old at the time of the crime. Harry is brought in to take over the case and to find out if the lab has made a mistake and if not to find out how an eight year old can leave DNA on the victim of a rape and murder.In the second case Councillor Irvin, one of Harry's long term enemies and a long term thorn in the side of the LAPD, has asked for Harry personally to be the lead investigator into the death of his son. The Councillors son has checked into a high class hotel and is found dead on the pavement outside. All the signs point to suicide but Irvin uses Harry's belief that "everyone counts or no one counts" to demand that Harry find out exactly what happened to his son in that hotel room. The case is as political as it is challenging. Pressure is placed on Harry from Irvin, from his partner and from the chief of police. Harry however will not be swayed or pressured from getting the truth.The relationship between Harry and his young daughter is also at the centre of this book. Harry is constantly thinking about her and the few scenes that the two are in together are wonderfully written and provide an extra layer to the Harry Bosch characterOnce again Connelly has written a fantastic story and a great novel. The two cases are both very, very well written and the moving from case to case keeps the book moving at a fantastic pace and the phrase page turner may have been invented for this book! I could not put it down. Without giving away too much Connelly also produces one of the most shocking and fantastic endings in the whole series.All in all this is a wonderful book. I would recommend it to any fans of either Michael Connelly or the crime genre in general.

Harry Bosch mit neuem Partner in der "open unsolved unit", bekommt einen heiklen zwanzig Jahre alten Fall auf den Schreibtisch. Im Fall einer ermordeten jungen Frau ergab die DNA Analyse einer Blutspur Hinweise auf einen registrierten Sexualstraftäter. Nur das der zum Zeitpunkt der Tat erst 8 Jahre alt war. Irgendwo muss hier gepfuscht worden sein, also erstmal Deckel drauf und auch intern prüfen das alle ihren Job gemacht haben. Wer wäre da besser geeignet als der kompromisslose Bosch, der stets der Wahrheit verpflichtet ist?Kaum das die Arbeit aufgenommen ist kommts richtig dick für Harry: Anweisung vom Polizeichef selbst, Bosch soll den Tot des Sohnes von Irvin Irving untersuchen. Boschs alter Feind Irving besteht auf Bosch als Ermittler. Irvings Sohn soll sich vom Balkon eines Hotels gestürzt haben. Gemeinderatsmitglied Irving glaubt an Mord. Ein heikler, politisch brisanter Fall, denn Irving tut ohnehin schon alles um der Polzei an den Karren zu fahren.Zwei Fälle in einem Roman, plus Bosch als alleinerziehender Vater und, soviel sei verraten, eine Romanze zwischen unserem Helden und einer Psychologien. Kann das gut gehen? Zum großen Teil klappt was Connelly sich vorgenommen hat.Gewohnt souveräne, minutiös geschilderte Polizeiarbeit und clever konstruierte Fälle mit Wendungen die bei der Stange halten. Ebenso gewohnt sind leider die Schwächen wenns um die Schilderungen vom Zusammenlebem Boschs und dessen Tochter geht. Das knirscht doch arg und der Teeni ist cooler und abgklärter als Harrys Kollegen. Trauer um die tote Mutter, Probleme mit dem abwesenden Vater, Wut oder Eifersucht auf dessen neue Freundin -alles Fehlanzeige. Die Kleine ist so verständnissvoll wie Harry herablassend, aufbrausend und selbstgerecht ist.Der Fall um Irvings Sohn nimmt für meinen Geschmack eine Wendung zuviel und erweist sich zum Ende doch als sehr konstruiert wenn DAS die Lösung sein soll (wird hier natürlich nicht verraten).Der zweite Fall hätte ebenfalls einen Täter vertragen, der weniger Hollywoodmässig böse, sondern eine ganze Ecke kleiner ausgefallen wäre. Dazwischen Dauerkonflikte mit Kollegen die entweder faul oder unfähig sind, Connelly macht das allmählich zur Masche.Unter Strich bleibt ein Krimi der sich gut liest, besser ist als "Nine Dragons" aber zu sehr Mainstream, zu routiniert erzählt ist um die Klasse älterer Bosch Romane erreichen zu können. 3,5 bis 4 Sterne.