City of Bones
Summary:
On New Year’s Day, Detective Harry Bosch fields a call that a dog has found a bone — a bone that the dog’s owner, a doctor, feels certain is a human bone.
Bosch investigates, and that chance discovery leads him to a shallow grave in the Hollywood hills, evidence of a murder committed more than twenty years earlier. It’s a cold case, but it stirs up Bosch’s memories of his own childhood as an orphan in the city. He can’t let it go. Digging through police reports and hospital records, tracking down street kids and runaways from the 1970s, Bosch finds a family ripped apart by an absence — and a trail, ever more tenuous, into a violent, terrifying world.[from https://www.michaelconnelly.com/novels/cityofbones/]
Group Reviews:
8 thumbs up
0 thumbs down
It’s rare that a book wins over the entire group, but Michael Connelly’s 12th Bosch novel did just that.
City Of Bones is clearly a police procedural, really a classic example of this sub-genre. Readers really liked the behind-the=scenes look at how a murder investigation is conducted. The desk work, the politics, the murder book–it felt authentic.
Bosch is a very interesting character, complex and not necessarily likable but such a good cop that readers identified with him regardless of his moral failings. We had quite a discussion of his character, talking about how he is a hard worker and good at what he does, but doesn’t work well inside the system. He’s got his own way of doing things. He follows procedure, but also has gut instints that cause him to go the extra mile. This also makes him difficult to work with.
Other characters didn’t get such a strong review; Julia felt like a throw-away character and it was difficult to connect with Bosch’s partner. We wondered if there was a back story in earlier series entries that would have better fleshed out this character. Aside from this, though, we felt the story was strong enough to stand on its own if you hadn’t read earlier entries in the series.
A few felt it took a while to get into the book but once the story got going it was very satisfying.
The mystery was deemed enjoyable and engaging, although the ending was unsatisfying but realistic at the same time. The story was multi-layered and we felt it was ultimately very sad. The portrayal of the victim and surrounding characters was well done; the police bureaucracy felt authentic and the portrayal of the media as a hungry, destructive monster that portrayed tragedy in sound bites and publicly tried a case-felt all too real.
