Connelly's Echo Park is supsenseful and intriguing
Echo Park by Michael Connelly
Chaos and corruption swirls around Hieronymous Bosch no matter how much he tries to whip the world into shape. His creator, bestselling author Michael Connelly, has set him down in a maelstrom of serial killers and moldering cases, and a haunting fear of his own imperfection.
Bosch is a detective with the LAPD. He's tried once to retire, but is now back on the detective force, working with the cold cases unit. In Echo Park, a hotshot young detective demands the file to an old case of Bosch's that has haunted him for years, he demands to be in on whatever is going down. It turns out they have a killer ready to confess to the murder and that Bosch and his partner may have missed an important clue all those years ago.
In an age when media sells itself to the lowest common denominator and many authors are willing to write down to their readers, it is refreshing to find a hard-boiled detective who is as intelligent, complex, and well-written as Harry Bosch is. Michael Connelly writes with intelligence, but never with arrogance. He gives us a character with a strong moral sense who feels his own failings keenly.
Echo Park is tautly written as a suspense thriller should be. Connelly manages to weave in sufficient doubts that we're never quite ready to believe that things are going to go well or that anything is what it appears to be. Rather, we're drawn into Bosch's skepticism and an uneasy feeling that the truth is being well-hidden.
As a thriller, Echo Park works very well for this reason. It maintains the suspense right up until the very end. Even when you think you have it figured out, there are a few more turns.
Throughout the story, Connelly explores the themes of corruption, responsibility, and chaos. Bosch may have a keen moral compass, but he's also a very violent person, one whom has little faith in any sort of system and places politics on nearly the same level as crime.
He's also not one who can get relationships together. He tries, but there don't seem to be women who are capable of understanding his intensity or his drives. Even his partner falters, though she has good reason to and up to that point was one of the few people capable of keeping him in any sort of line. I did grow rather frustrated with the FBI agent who walks into his life. They very quickly re-establish a relationship with references to the past that the new reader is simply left out of understanding. However, she has this obsession with being safe, even if it means others are put in danger. When it comes to courage, she appears to have very little of it and of loyalty even less.
In an interview, Michael Connelly hesitated to recommend one of his early books in the Harry Bosch series to someone who was just getting started. He acknowledged that while it might make sense chronologically, he'd like to think that he's gotten better as he's progressed through the series. Echo Park very much has that air about it — this isn't a book churned out on the yearly schedule just to keep the royalty checks coming in. Rather, it is written by an author with a deep commitment to improvement and excellence.
Echo Park makes a great introduction to the series and a very large enticement to go back and read more of Bosch's history. It leaves the reader curious whether his life has always swirled with such chaos or whether the man has ever gotten a break.
