I am late to the party. I don’t mind being late to new, to me, characters. I love discovering people I want to read about, learn about, and spend time with. Because when you are reading a book series, it is like watching a television or movie series. In visual arts, you are waiting for next week, or maybe next year to see what happens next. In books, we have longer, sometimes just months but often a year or more waiting to know what happens to our new friend. Even if the story is wrapped up in the previous book, the life of that person doesn’t end, like yours doesn’t, what comes next and will it be as exciting as the last thing that happened? I get to fly through some of that unknown when I come to a character late in the series. The biggest meaning I am not impatiently waiting to know what happens in the character arc next. The downside, for me, is that I am a pretty fast reader, especially when I am excited about new books, so I sometimes catch-up before the next in the series is ready. Then I am like everyone else, stalking author websites and social media in hopes of learning the exact second the next book becomes available! So, I am late to the Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch party, but there are quite a few, so I should be okay with filling my Bosch world cup without pause for a long while.
Michael Connelly came to my knowledge with The Lincoln Lawyer, which I enjoyed. I didn’t spend a lot of time learning about the author, though, else I would have found Bosch World much sooner. So, when I was perusing my library offerings for an interesting read, I came across a Michael Connelly book that I hadn’t read nor was it involving Mickey Haller. Mr. Haller is the main character in The Lincoln Lawyer. The premise was interesting and he had written something I like before, so let’s give it a try. The Black Echo, the book that introduces us to Bosch World, was a gripping read. I am not gripped by a book and its characters all that often. I love a lot of books and characters but I am not always losing sleep to see what happens next! I was hooked and am spending way too much time reading each book. I am currently on book three, The Concrete Blond. Mr. Connelly is on book twenty, so I hope I don’t get caught up too soon. Though, as I have found after book two, Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch have overlapping lives and I can’t wait to reread the Haller books as they coincide with the Bosch books. It seems to be a vast and interlocking world and those are some of the best kind.
So, Hieronymus Bosch is a man intimately acquainted with violence and being alone. His mother names him after a Dutch painter and he doesn’t know his father. His mother is murdered when he is eleven and he spends the rest of his growing years being shuttled between foster homes and the state-run youth hall. He joins the army and becomes a tunnel rat during the Vietnam War. When he leaves, he joins the Los Angeles Police Department and works himself into a prestigious detective position. But, when we meet him in The Black Echo, he has been demoted and disgraced which sets up the characterization of Harry as a lone shark who is out for the truth, no matter the cost. It is costing him plenty and he seems to be accepting of this truth. Each book, so far, is written on a timeline closely following the previous one. This series writing is really fun because no matter the time between publishing, it feels as if you have missed nothing of the character’s life. You feel intimately connected to their lives and invested in what happens next. I would think it might be good for the writer too, it is like writing how we live, which can lead to an abundance of information and less room to make errors about the people we have written about. Bosch has a highly developed sense of right and wrong, he wants the answer, because the right answer is more important than the political line of the police force. He finds the politics and familial attitude of the department a bit stifling, beneath him, and really I think he has no real idea how to be in a family. He doesn’t have a lot of history of familial bonds, no way to transfer that kind of devotion to a job he sees as very black and white. Now, this in no way means he won’t bend the rules to get to the truth, but he seems to make sure that when he does, they won’t impede on prosecuting the culprit in the end. So, his separation inside the department is its own character because everyone else is in the departmental family, they don’t have any problem with the politics, they go along to get along. Harry being apart is an affront to some and no problem to others. How this impacts each book looms large in the first two books, I look forward to figuring out if it continues to play a part.
These crime thrillers are just the thing for a good story. The twists have been good, the back story is revealed a bit at a time, steadily giving us insight into Harry and how he lives his life and performs his job, which he will tell you is his mission not a job. If you enjoy crime thrillers, or if you are looking for something new to try, give Hieronymus Bosch a go, then let me know if he excites you too… or not!