“There were too many people here now, a crush of bodies on the sidewalks and too many cars on the highways, people crowded into houses and apartment buildings in Santa Ana, in Anaheim, cities that used to be good places to live. The landmarks of Scott’s youth, the burger stands and the diners, were now covered with the grimy stains of time and something else, an alien presence.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (OCT 17, 2011)

From the looks of it you could never tell that the beautiful Torres-Thompson home in fancy Laguna Rancho Estates, is on the cusp of unraveling. But look closely and you can see the edges of the tropical garden coming undone, the lawn not done just right; and these are merely the symptoms of greater troubles. For the couple Scott Torres and Maureen Thompson the country’s financial crisis has come knocking, even in their ritzy Los Angeles neighborhood.

Scott Torres once spearheaded a booming software company that went broke in the software bust. As the book opens, he is reduced to doing mundane work for a new software firm. The family is beset with enough financial insecurities that Scott and Maureen let go of two staff members in their hired help team—the gardener, Pepe, and the babysitter, Lupe. 

The one maid left standing, Araceli Ramirez, once only held cooking and cleaning responsibilities but now finds herself, much to her annoyance, occasionally watching the boys, Brandon and Keenan and the baby, Samantha.

As Araceli cleans and cooks, she silently watches the dynamics of the family unfold. One day, Maureen, tired of cutting corners from the lavish lifestyle she once knew, decides she will splurge on a new desert garden—one that will replace the decaying tropical one that gardener Pepe once so lovingly tended. The astronomical sum she spends on the landscaping is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Scott and Maureen have a heated altercation, witnessed by Araceli. The next morning, Araceli wakes up to find both her jefe and jefa (there’s a little Spanish left untranslated in the book, some of which can’t be made out just by context) gone with the baby. The boys are home alone with her. As it happens, Maureen and Scott leave independently each one assuming, through a set of coincidences, that the other spouse will be around to take care of the boys. Neither is; the boys are left completely alone for three whole days.

At the end of the third day, at her wit’s end, Araceli decides she will bring the boys to Los Angeles where she is sure their Mexican grandfather (Scott’s Dad) lives. The three set off on an adventure to find grandpa. Predictably they never do.

In the meantime, Maureen and Scott have returned home only to find the boys and the housekeeper missing. They immediately jump to the conclusion that the boys have been kidnapped. The police are called in and all hell breaks loose.

The fact that Araceli is an illegal immigrant complicates the situation tenfold and soon the case makes national headlines. After a series of adventures, the boys are reunited with their parents. But the case has by now developed a life of its own. Scott and Maureen for their part become the stand-in for rich, privileged folks who get constantly shown up as the poster children for bad parenting.

Then there’s Araceli. On the one hand she is worshipped by fellow Mexicans as the exploited, underprivileged Mexicana—someone who represents all the collective immigrant angst in the United States. On the other hand, there’s the flag-waving crowd—members of whom insist that Araceli needs to be deported if not permanently jailed for her crimes. As the book makes its way through to the end, Araceli decides to take some of these matters in her own hands.

The Barbarian Nurseries starts out with a good premise but at every stage it moves so predictably that one can see the ending coming way before it actually arrives. The author, Hector Tobar, won a Pulitzer as part of a team at L.A. times covering the L.A. riots. Unfortunately his journalistic brio doesn’t translate well to fiction. The Barbarian Nurseries has one coincidence too many woven into the story until it totally strains credulity. For example, when Maureen leaves home with Samantha and goes to a spa, the delays that hold her there for three whole days are really difficult to swallow.

Tobar does have keen insight into the various segments of the California narrative—the ultra-rich millionaires, the hired help, the immigrant psyche—but he falls short of weaving these narratives into a compelling story. One would have loved to learn more about Araceli’s past in Mexico, or even about Maureen’s Midwestern roots for example. But too often Araceli and her owners fall into clichéd stereotypes, for what people like them should say and do. Even the media circus that attends the “kidnapping” case drags on way too long.

To his credit, Tobar successfully raises some essential questions: about the act of parenting in these intensely wired times and about the place of immigrants in our larger social fabric.

The Barbarian Nurseries has been billed as the great contemporary California novel and it certainly has all the elements for one. Unfortunately its somewhat predictable story has the book degenerating into precisely the thing it derides the most — a sound bite.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 14 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 27, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Héctor Tobar
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: My Hollywood by Mona Simpson

Bibliography:

• The Tattooed Soldier (2000)
• The Barbarian Nurseries (September 2011)

Nonfiction:

• Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States (2006)

“Over the last week, if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that you’re only who you choose to be. Every moment. The past is gone. Memories are no more solid than dreams. The only real thing, the only true thing, is the present. That’s it.”

“So the things we’ve done don’t count?”

“Of course they do. But we can decide how much. And we can decide what we want the present to be like. We can live it however we want. Own every minute. Be the person we want to be.”

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  AUG 6, 2011)

A man wakes up, naked, shivering and alone on a desolate beach. He has no idea who he is or why he’s there. He and the reader gradually get clues: he’s Daniel Hayes; he lives in Los Angeles; he’s in northern Maine; and the cops want him, but he doesn’t know why. So begins a new mystery from Marcus Sakey, known for the Blade Itself and The Amateurs. Determined to confirm his identity and find out why he traveled cross-country in a drunk, drug-induced haze, Hayes re-traces he cross-country journey to Los Angeles.

At the same time, in Los Angeles, a woman changes her identity numerous times, stealing a gun and searching in bars for Hayes. Another man, with evil intent it seems—he’s described by one character as a cockroach who crawls in and out of everyone’s dark places–startles Hayes’s lawyer while in the shower, also in search of the elusive Hayes. These three characters will come together at some point, but to say more will give away much of Sakey’s story which twists and turns much like driving the hairpins of a high mountain road.

Sakey’s story is much more than a mystery though. He uses Daniel, and his dissociative fugue, to launch a literary discussion of memory, identity and self. What is memory’s role in self? Do memories make a person? Can you concoct a self from putting together memories?

Rarely in a story are the reader and the main character learning and piecing together information simultaneously. Learning along with Hayes is part of what makes this novel fascinating, along with the mystery of course. Sakey also uses alternating viewpoints to give different perspectives and give us information about other characters. This method works in this novel, but what doesn’t, at least for me, is when Sakey switches from traditional narrative style to a screenplay style. We learn Hayes is a screenwriter, but this change in style stopped the story for me rather than being an ingenious style shift.

Sakey begins the story with short, choppy sentences that mimic the panic that Hayes feels when he initially comes out of the water. In other places, Sakey has a lyrical prose style, making the reader want to read slowly to savor the language as much as the ideas. His vivid descriptions bring places and situations to life, like the first time he looks in the mirror hoping that seeing himself will free his memory.

“No fog parted. No veil lifted. The man in the mirror offered no answers.

He looked exhausted, bruised and worn and dark-circled, but more or less familiar.  For a vertiginous moment, Daniel lost track of which was him and which was the reflection, like one was a doppleganger that could break free and act independently, as he seemed to have snapped from his life.”

Sakey excels at character development, but he also succeeds with dialogue and showing rather than telling about the relationships between his characters. They’re all so intertwined to give an example would ruin parts of the story. While I can’t tell you why the title of the book is appropriate, trust me that it is. For those who appreciate a literary mystery topped with much to think about regarding self, identity and memory, Sakey’s tale will fit the bill. He has surprises in store, and it’s a wild ride.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 38 readers
PUBLISHER:	Dutton Adult (June 9, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Marcus Sakey
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Amateurs

Bibliography:

• The Blade Itself (2007)
• At the City’s Edge (2008)
• Good People (2008)
• The Amateurs (2009)
• Scar Tissue: Stories (2010)
• The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes (June 2011)

“Cleaning other people’s houses—their cherished possessions in both good and bad taste, the chipped dishes they eat off of, the ratty sofas they make love on, the unlevel, puckering floors they shed curly hairs on—is the most intimate relationship you can have with them. Yet every boss I’ve worked for wants that relationship to be unobtrusive to the point of being invisible. I have done my best to live my life in between those two places, intimacy and invisibility. Over the years I’ve absolved the remains of a thousand indiscretions without judgment, and have learned not to ask questions. Men staying over, friends moving in, children moving out; none of this is my concern. If my job is done right, what you find when you get home is a comforting antiseptic, fresh Band-Aid smell, spotless floors, and no evidence another human being, a cleaning lady, was ever there. ”

Book Review:

Review by Terez Rose (JUN 23, 2011)

The silent, overlooked residents of Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood play the starring role in author Brando Skyhorse’s debut, The Madonnas of Echo Park. The novel, really more of a collection of short stories, each narrated by a different character, presents to the reader different facets of both the Mexican and Mexican-American experience in multicultural Los Angeles. Skyhorse, winner of the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award for this novel, was born and raised in Echo Park. An Author’s Note sets the story (it should be noted, though, that the author calls it a fictionalized account). The sixth-grade Skyhorse, unaware of his Mexican heritage—he’d been told he was American Indian—inadvertently insulted a classmate, a girl named Aurora Esperanza. This novel, then, is his apology to her, his attempt to share with the public the world of Echo Park.

“Bienvenidos,” narrated by Aurora’s father Hector, starts the novel in a highly readable, compelling fashion. Hector, while born in Mexico, has been living in the U.S. his entire life and has no memory of Mexico. Without citizenship or papers, however, work options are limited, and when the restaurant he worked at for eighteen years closes, day labor is all he can find. While on a job, Hector witnesses a crime and faces a moral dilemma: help justice be served by reporting the crime, which will require him to reveal his own illegal immigrant status, or remain silent and thus avoid deportation. The conflict is sharp, affecting, and, like so many of the stories, packs an emotional punch.

One of Skyhorse’s greatest skills, besides writing stellar prose, is the ability to write convincingly from the perspective of a wide variety of characters. Ex-convicts, gang members, estranged mothers, rebellious, hopeful teens all ring true. In “Los Feliz,” we are in the head of Felicia, Hector’s ex-wife, who cleans houses while struggling to raise a teen daughter and assimilate into the wealthier culture that provides her income. Felicia shares her story without a trace of self-pity, while observing the clear dichotomy between her world and that of her clients.

“In Los Feliz, I needed to be invisible and inaudible. Mrs. Calhoun and I managed to communicate without ever saying a word to each other’s face. The massive double front doors made a loud, drawbridge sound when I unlocked them, letting her know I’d arrived. I’d shout “Good morning” in English until Mrs. Calhoun responded with an echoed “Good morning,” often from one of the bathrooms. That was my sign to start at the opposite side of the house. When I finished a room, Mrs. Calhoun stepped inside and read a magazine until I finished the next room. Like the arms on a clock, we moved together through six bathrooms, five bedrooms, the split kitchen, two “recreation” rooms (a name that confused me; I didn’t have a room to create things in, let alone “re”-create them), and a living room as big as Aurora’s school cafeteria. We could spend the day inches apart and never see each other.”

Skyhorse does not vilify the wealthy in any way, and the conflict remains clear, blameless, in the subtle tension behind Felicia’s interactions, or lack thereof, with her client. Less convincing, however, is the friendship that blossoms between Felicia and Mrs. Calhoun after a year of strained formality. Mrs. Calhoun suffers from an emotional malaise that never quite gets pinned down. Depression? Ennui? Fear of being left alone? Agoraphobia? Marital strife? As a reader closer to Mrs. Calhoun’s description than Felicia’s, I found it annoyingly murky. For all the marvelous work Skyhorse has done in bringing the Mexican-American characters and their friends to life, this segment of the population, the wealthy white woman, struck me as a shallow, half-finished depiction. Which, given the story’s intent, still manages to be appropriate. Felicia’s English is self-admittedly poor, so it would be difficult to imagine her fully understanding what made Mrs. Calhoun tick. A special friendship? Harder to buy.

Petty gripes aside, this is a very important chapter and story, as the reader learns the full backstory of who the “Madonnas” of Echo Park were. Felicia and her daughter Aurora were among a group of mothers and daughters who liked to dress up like the singer Madonna and dance to her music in the street. Tragically, at one such event, the group gets caught in gang crossfire, in which a three-year-old girl is killed. This pivotal scene has long term repercussions and is the link that ties together so many of the novel’s stories, in startling and sad ways.

One of the most outstanding stories in the collection is “Rules of the Road.” Bus driver Efren Mendoza has been marvelously rendered, so achingly real and human, I feel like I know the man, and I respect him, even as I don’t wholly like him. Having left home at fourteen in order to evade membership in the gang both his brother and father belong to, he has fought to earn a respectable place in society, even at the risk of becoming hardened, unsympathetic.

“My salary of $21.27 an hour relies on my punctuality (I carry a back-up watch; you are penalized if you are one minute late for your shift). It’s a fair wage, one we had to go on several strikes—five during my time—to protect. Those socialist Che-worshiping Reconquistadoras complained these strikes hurt poor Mexican workers who cannot afford a car the most. You’re a Mexican, they say, trying to bond with me by speaking Spanish. How can you turn against your own kind? they say. But they aren’t my kind. They’re not Americans. They’re illegals, and the benefits to law-abiding Americans like me outweigh whatever inconveniences these people face breaking our laws.”

When things go wrong on one of Efren’s shifts, the reader feels it all: the shock, the frustration that this is not how things in his world are supposed to go, his moral and professional dilemma, the troubling but very real conclusion. Great stuff. I will never forget this story.

The Madonnas of Echo Park is a vivid, intricately woven story of eight disparate voices that come together to portray a once-invisible neighborhood steeped in cultural identity, violence, incidental beauty, now caught in the grips of change brought by time and gentrification. Spanning thirty years and stories from three generations, filled with emotional heft and bittersweet truths, along with a dollop of magical realism, Skyhorse’s debut serves up satisfying fare indeed.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 34 readers
PUBLISHER:	Free Press (February 8, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Terez Rose
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Brando Skyhorse
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Previous Pen/Hemingway winners: A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living by Michael Dahlie Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris Graceland by Chris Abani

Bibliography:

• The Madonnas of Echo Park (February 2010)

Memoir:

• Take This Man (June 2014)

“Said it was like someone pried off the lid and showed him how Hollywood really works.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (JUN 20, 2011)

Imagine a kick-ass action flick–say one starring that perennial crowd-pleaser, Bruce Willis, and then imagine the source material, and you’d just about have an image of Duane Swierczynski’s latest book, Fun and Games. This is the first entry in the Charlie Hardie trilogy. Hell and Gone follows in October 2011, and the third novel, Point and Shoot is scheduled for publication in March 2012. Fun and Games delves into the old Hollywood story that studio fixers leap in to stabilize publicity nightmares. This legend has bounced around Hollywood for decades and still lingers over the deaths of notables such as Jean Harlow’s husband, Paul Bern. Recently actor Randy Quaid and his wife fled to Canada and applied for refugee status on the grounds that they are in fear of their lives due to the “Hollywood Star Whackers.” They state that their claims are substantiated by the mysterious deaths of various Hollywood luminaries, including David Carradine.

In an art-follows-life sort of way … enter Fun and Games….

The main character in Fun and Games is professional house sitter, Charlie Hardie. This is the latest gig for a man who hails from Philadelphia and has a shady past which includes a nebulous relationship with Philadelphia police and the FBI. But that was a few years back, and these days, Hardie is in danger of becoming a couch potato:

“Yes, he sort of used to be something like a cop. But that had been three long years ago. A lot of drinking and poor eating and general sloth had atrophied his muscles. He was slower, larger. His liver wasn’t talking to him anymore, and his heart gave him little friendly reminders every so often that he might want to get his ass up and move around a little. The mornings he felt good simply meant that he’d passed out before he could have any more to drink.”

House-sitting allows him to drift around the country while he lives out of a suitcase. Hardie likes to keep it simple, and he has a few rules for house-sitting: “He didn’t do plants, didn’t do pets. He made sure people didn’t steal shit.” His dream gig is to stay in a house, alone, and watch old films. He has only one rule when it comes to film. He won’t watch anything made after he was born. Hardie’s latest job is to watch the isolated Hollywood Hills home of Andrew Lowenbruck, a Hollywood music producer. Given that Lowenbruck has an extensive classic film library, it looks like a dream gig to Hardie, but he hadn’t counted Them into the equation….

When Hardie walks into Lowenbruck’s home, he walks slap bang into a “narrative” about to be staged by The Accident People. This is a team of highly trained, and deadly equipped assassins who are about to snuff out bit part action flick actress, Lane Madden. The Accident People have tried and failed to kill Lane in a fake car accident, so when Hardie walks into the deadly scenario at Lowenbruck’s home, he enters completely unprepared to meet a bruised, terrified, washed up-actress who’s fighting for her life against pissed-off, time-stressed assassins. Not good.

Fun and Games is breathless roller-coaster ride of non-stop action from cover-to-cover. There are simply no down times in the story, and Swierczynski’s comic book roots are evident in the plot and action sequencing. Hardie and Lane make a good team. Hardie is the laconic, practical sort who has walked away from a life he can no longer handle while Lane Madden is the bimbo bit player who discovers untapped reserves of courage and ingenuity. It’s no exaggeration to say that once I picked up this book, I was reluctant to put it down. I’ll hazard a guess that Swierczynski has a hit trilogy in his future.

Has Fun and Games been optioned for the film version yet? If not, Hollywood, what are you waiting for?

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 35 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mulholland Books; Original edition (June 20, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Official blog for Duane Swierczynski
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Bust, Slide and The Maxby Ken Bruen and Jason Starr Zeroville by Steve Erickson

Bibliography:

• Secret Dead Men (2005)
• The Wheel Man (2005)
• Severance Package (2008)
• The Blonde (2007)
• Expiration Date (2010)

Charlie Hardie trilogy:

• Fun and Games (June 2011)
• Hell and Gone (October 2011)
• Point and Shoot (March 2012)

“There is a big picture to this case and the defense is going to show it to you.  The prosecution would like you to believe that this is a simple case of vengeance.  But murder is never simple and if you look for shortcuts in an investigation or a prosecution then you are going to miss things.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowksy  (APR 10, 2011)

Michael (Mickey) Haller is still working out of the back seat of his armor-plated Lincoln Town Car, but he now specializes in helping people prevent or delay foreclosure on their homes. In the shattered economy and with housing prices in freefall, business has been brisk. Although criminal defense is his first love, Mickey has changed course, knowing that “the only growth industry in the law business was foreclosure defense.”

It may not be exciting, but it pays the bills. In fact, Mickey has hired an associate, Jennifer Aronson who, along with his driver, Rojas, office manager (and ex-wife), Lorna, and investigator, Cisco, comprise his entire staff.  Mickey does an about-face when one of his clients, Lisa Trammel, is arrested for the murder of Mitchell Bondurant, head of Westland National Bank’s mortgage loan division. Lisa, who had previously hired Mickey to help her stay in her home, is charged with waiting for Bondurant in a parking garage, and attacking him in a fit of rage. Mickey throws himself into Trammel’s case with determination, creativity, and vigor. Opposing counsel is Andrea Freeman, a savvy and ambitious prosecutor who knows all of Mickey’s tricks and has quite a few of her own.   Haller tries to draw attention away from his client, and points out that there are others who had reason to want Bondurant dead.  Freeman sticks to the nitty-gritty—eyewitness, blood, and DNA evidence that point to Trammel as the perpetrator.

The Fifth Witness, by Michael Connelly, is a fast-paced, darkly humorous, and absorbing legal thriller in which everything gels: the lively and memorable cast, the beautifully constructed plot, and the entertaining byplay between the judge and the two opposing attorneys. Haller and Freeman are smart enough to use each piece of evidence, no matter how peripheral or circumstantial, to full advantage. On the personal front, Mickey spends some quality time with his fourteen-year-old daughter, Hayley, and his other ex-wife, Maggie, whom he still adores and hopes to win back.

Mickey, with the help of his able team, uses every device he can think of to get his client off; however, in the back of his mind, he is uncomfortable. Although everyone is entitled to a vigorous defense, how far should Mickey go to sway the jury? In this timely book, Connelly addresses the housing mess that still affects many beleaguered Americans, presents us with an electrifying trial, and proves once again that he is still at the top of his game.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 468 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company; First Edition edition (April 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Michael Connelly
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Harry Bosch reviews: The Drop Nine Dragons The Overlook Echo Park The Closers The Narrows Lost Light City of Bones Michael Haller: The Reversal Brass Verdict The Lincoln Lawyer Stand-alone mysteries: The Scarecrow Chasing the Dime Bloodwork

Bibliography:

LAPD Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch Series

• The Black Echo (1992)
• The Black Ice (1993)
• The Concrete Blonde (1994)
• The Last Coyote (1995)
• Trunk Music (1997)
• Angels Flight (1999)
• A Darkness More than Night (2001) *
• City of Bones (2002) /
• Lost Light (2003)
• The Narrows (2004) ***
• The Closers (2005)
• Echo Park (2006)
• The Overlook (2007)
• Nine Dragons (2009) ****
• The Drop (2011)
• The Black Box (2012)

Mickey Haller:

• The Lincoln Lawyer (2005) /
• The Brass Verdict (2008) **
• The Reversal (2010) **
• The Fifth Witness (2011)
• The Gods of Guilt (October 2013)

Other:

• The Poet (1996) ***
• Blood Work (1998) *
• Void Moon (2000)
• Chasing the Dime (2002)
• The Scarecrow (2009)

* Terry McCaleb is in these novels
** Harry Bosch is in these novels
*** The Poet is in these novels.
****Mickey Haller is in this novel

Nonfiction:

• Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers (2006)

Movies from Books:

• Blood Work (2002)
• The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

“I… help people. I’m good at it.”

Book Review:

Review by Hagen Baye  (MAR 19, 2011)

The latest and 14th installment of Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole/Joe Pike crime fiction series is The Sentry, denominated “A Joe Pike Novel.” The Sentry is the third Pike book of the series, the other eleven being Elvis Cole novels. In retrospect, however, L.A. Requiem, the series’ 8th book, should have been also denoted a Pike novel, for the Joe Pike character is the principal actor in that 1999 book. It is possible that Crais had not determined at that juncture that Pike would shed a secondary role from time to time as he has now done, starting with The Watchman in 2007, followed by The First Rule in 2010 and most recently with The Sentry.

L.A. Requiem is significant in that it reflected a shift in Crais’s focus regarding his private detective partners Cole and Pike. With L.A. Requiem, he starts to delve into the issues—both those arising from their youth and from the nature of their work—that confront these two highly skilled and courageous men. The pre-L.A. Requiem series books established Cole as a whacky, wise-cracking, crazy Hawaiian shirt kind of guy, who touted himself as the “World’s Greatest Detective.” That pose of Cole is much more subdued in L.A. Requiem and the following books and, significantly, The Sentry is the first book where the words “World’s Greatest Detective” do not even appear.

On the other hand, Pike, the ex-marine, ex-LAPD officer, ex-mercenary for hire (for the right cause), is forever stoic and withdrawn, except the issues that affect him are more in the forefront starting with L.A. Requiem. In particular, as a youngster his inability to stop his abusive father’s violence against his mother and himself motivated him to prepare himself to be an effective defender and protector against such aggression. After being able to handle his father, his goal to thwart bullies and the like motivated him to enlist in the Marine Corps to perfect his fighting skills, after which the LAPD was his career choice. However, when his LAPD partner commits suicide, Pike sacrifices his beloved badge by making it appear that he accidentally shot the partner, so the partner’s family would receive the benefit checks that would have otherwise been forfeited by the partner’s suicide. While Pike accepted his great sacrifice without seeming regret or bitterness, it undoubtedly was something that drove Pike to withdraw further “into that secret place that only he knew.” (An ironic by-product of this sacrifice was the enmity visited upon Pike by his fellow officers who blamed him for his partner’s death. This enmity persists in The Sentry, as the principal detective in the story was a LAPD contemporary of Pike’s and his intense dislike of Pike is quite evident.)

Shadowing the events of The Sentry is the nightmare Elvis Cole has at the beginning of the book that introduces a sense of foreboding. Cole is awakened by a dream where his best friend and partner Joe Pike is shot to death. Cole is kept awake disturbed by the impact that the violence that permeates his work has had on his life. Principally, it has caused the woman he loves to forsake him for safer grounds, notwithstanding the fact that the violence he so willingly confronts is in the context of doing good, to stop/prevent terrible persons from doing harm to innocent people. This issue has disturbed him since L.A. Requiem and the books that follow.

The Sentry centers on Pike’s relationship with a young woman. Dru Rayne is introduced to him as the niece of Wilson Smith, a sandwich shop owner. Pike saves Smith from a beating by two Latino “gangbangers,” apparently seeking protection payments from him, albeit Smith appears more resentful than appreciative of Pike’s intervention. Pike is told that Dru and Smith are from New Orleans, having left due to Katrina five years ago with no reason to return. There is an immediate mutual attraction between Dru and Pike. (“She looked at him as if she had never seen anything like him….” “[H]e couldn’t stop looking at her….”)

To her concern that the gangbangers may return and cause more trouble, Pike gives her his personal cell number (and not the business number he gave the police officers who responded to the assault on Smith) and tells her to call him if they do. And, sure enough, the following day, Dru calls Pike as they did return to smash the store’s window and strew paint all over the shop. After surveying the mess, Pike arranges through a community contact to meet with the gangbangers’ leader, their “jefe.” To his surprise, Miguel Azzara, who refers to himself as “Michael,” is clean-cut and preppy, with more of the appearance of a MBA-educated businessman than that of a leader of a street gang. Nevertheless, Azzara assures Pike that his people will leave Dru and Smith alone.

Pike conveys all this to Dru over a lunch “date,” where a relationship continues to develop. In response to Pike’s query about whether she’d go out with him, Dru shows him a picture of her daughter, whom she says is staying with her sister. Pike is touched and so is she to learn that this does not deflect his interest in her. (“…[H]er smile flashed like summer lighting when he asked her out anyway.”) Pike is clearly buoyed by the romantic possibilities with Dru, so much so that he opens up to her about his mercenary work, in part to share intimate information that he rarely shared with anyone (other than Cole) and in part to deflect the negative comments about Pike’s violent propensities spoken to her by the detective assigned to investigate Smith’s beating..

The next day, all hell breaks loose as Pike hears from a police officer looking to locate Smith and Dru. The officer informs him that someone had desecrated their shop by spreading blood and dead animal parts all over the store in an act described as “malicious vandalism.” The person or persons responsible leave an ominous “I AM HERE” message written in blood on the shop wall.

Pike’s call to Dru goes to her voice mail. He is worried that she had not called him and that she does not return his subsequent calls to her. The detective assigned to the assault case reports that Smith had just called him to report that he and Dru were high-tailing it to Oregon. Pike does not believe that’s possible. Dru would have at least informed him of it. Her silence disturbs him. His response is to learn where Dru and Smith are staying and go there to investigate. He eventually learns from a neighbor that one of the gangbangers involved in Smith’s beating had been there earlier that morning.

Pike now fears that Dru and Smith have been abducted. He takes the offensive by “stressing” Azzara. Among other things, he calls him and in response to the jefe’s mention of his alliance with La Eme, the Mexican Mafia, Pike informs Azzara that “War is what I do,” and such alliance did not intimidate in the least.

Pike calls on Cole to assist. First, Cole re-examines Dru and Smith’s house and he confirms that it did not appear that they left in any hurry. However, he also finds evidence that someone else had broken in since Pike had been there earlier.

Then, matters are taken up a significant notch when the two gangbangers who had attacked Smith are found viciously massacred by some extremely strong, skilled murderer while they were apparently serving as lookouts overseeing Smith’s and Dru’s house. The manner in which they are butchered lead Pike and Cole to conclude that there must be some mysterious third party involved, and Pike realizes he has some rethinking to do as all of his assumptions were wrong.

While Pike presses on, Cole does his investigative magic. Noticing Smith & Dru’s neighbor’s security camera, he gets the film covering the moment of truth and it shows Smith and Dru leaving in their car accompanied not only by the gangbanger, but–surprise, surprise!–also by Azzara. But even more bizarre, it does not look like a hostage situation is at play.

Then, tapping his New Orleans connections via former girlfriend Lucy Chenier, he learns that Smith’s and Dru’s names belong to persons who are long dead. Then, via finger prints lifted from cups, cans and other objects Cole took from their house, through the assistance of gawky, goofy John Chen of LAPD’s Scientific Investigations Division (a character who joined the Cole/Pike ensemble in L. A. Requiem), he learns who Smith and Dru really are and that all that they had told Pike about themselves was false. More importantly, he learns that they are being pursued by some professionally trained homicidal psycho, so disturbed that he carries on conversations with imaginary friends, and who has been paid to hunt them down by a Bolivian drug cartel because Smith skipped New Orleans two weeks before, not because of Katrina, with something valuable belonging to the cartel. This guy, dubbed ”the executioner” by the feds, is suspected of killing 8 or 9 persons in the course of chasing after “Smith” and “Dru” across the country, and before this story is over, he will murder another 10. (In fact, were this book ever made into a movie, its credits would list some 30 characters in all. Of these characters, nearly 2/3rds of them would be killed before the movie is over.)

Cole also learns that Dru’s been lying to Pike about the house, about her relationship with Smith (he’s not her uncle), about her kid and sister–about pretty much everything….But none of the lies stop Pike from his desire to save Dru: no matter what, he tells Cole, she’s still in danger and needs their help. (Pike’s remark about being good at helping people was directed to Dru.)

Eventually, there is the inevitable showdown. The executioner having received similar tactical training as Pike (he also worked as a professional mercenary, both Pike and this fellow maneuver with moves and countermoves based on knowing how the other would react. It was like they were playing chess, except for the lives that were at stake. While the madman and Pike talked about exchanging Dru who was with Pike for Smith, whom the madman had gotten hold of, both know they each endeavored to kill the other and to leave with Smith and Dru alive. The maniac’s goal is to torture them to find out where they hid what they stole from the Bolivians, and then kill them. Pike’s goal is to keep them (and Cole and himself) alive. Read The Sentry to see how it all works out.

With The Sentry, Crais does not disappoint with respect to his creating another clever, inventive story. After all, Crais is a masterful story teller. He is particularly adept at how he engineers Pike’s and Cole’s getting to the bottom of what is going on. As their investigation unfolds, the reader cannot be other than impressed by the skills and resources they bring to bear.

Nevertheless, some readers may feel that Crais has not fully delivered on the impending doom forecast raised by Cole’s foreboding nightmare at the start of the book. What follows does not really connect to Cole’s dream at the beginning of the story. Some readers may also be disappointed with Crais’s portrayal of Pike’s relationship with Dru, especially how preliminary it is and how there is no fully developed explanation of Pike’s feelings toward this woman and vice versa,and,  if there truly were any reciprocal feelings on her part toward him. Crais may have intended that this aspect of the book was related to Pike’s “Everybody needs somebody” comment from The First Rule, that connection is not obvious.

Notwithstanding such considerations, even if those issues with Crais represent valid criticisms, they do not detract from The Sentry’s being a great read that is a hard-to-put-down page-turner and a worthy addition to the Cole/Pike series about these two courageous men who are ever willing to put their lives on the line to save others.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 100 readers
PUBLISHER:	Putnam Adult; First Edition (January 11, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Hagen Baye
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Robert Crais
EXTRAS:	Excerpt Publisher page & video on The Sentry
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The First Rule The Watchman Chasing Darkness The Forgotten Man The Last Detective

Bibliography:

Elvis Cole / Joe Pike series:

• The Monkey’s Raincoat (1988) /
• Stalking the Angel (1989)
• Lullaby Town (1992)
• Free Fall (1993)
• Voodoo River (1995)
• Sunset Express (1996)
• Indigo Slam (1997)
• L.A. Requiem (1999)
• The Last Detective (January 2003)
• The Forgotten Man (February 2005)
• Chasing Darkness (July 2008)

Joe Pike / Elvis Cole Series:

• The Watchman (February 2007)
• The First Rule (January 2009)
• The Sentry (January 2011)

Other:

• Demolition Angel (June 2000)
• Hostage (August 2001)
• The Two Minute Rule (Febuary 2006)

Movies from books:

• Hostage (2005)

“As for me, I made myself scarce. I had enough problems with it at school, and it was too much to cope with dashed expectations on the faces of strangers. It wasn’t my fault that I had grown up. I couldn’t stay a seven year-old forever, trapped on the pages of the books. I was still just about recognizable as the boy in Lila’s drawings and the comparison was not a favorable one. I came to learn the national characteristics of disappointment: the resentfulness of the English, the downright hostility of the French, who looked as if they might ask for their money back, the touching sadness on the gentle faces of the Japanese – such pain that I both was and wasn’t the boy in the books. I was Dorian Gray in reverse: my attic was in every bookshop in the world.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (DEC 24, 2010)

The first half of Mr. Toppit takes its readers for a grand ride. This debut novel, written by Charles Elton, has had quite a following in the United Kingdom and has just been released in the United States. It is a novel about speculation and conjecture, the ‘what ifs’ of life, and wishing things might have been different. Mostly though, it is about Luke Hayman and how he became immortalized in his father’s Hayseed Chronicles as the boy who eluded Mr. Toppit in the Darkwood.

Arthur Hayman has led a somewhat ordinary life working in the film industry as a writer of small scenes for mostly grade B movies. At the same time, he has been writing a series of books for older children called The Hayseed Chronicles. The series is about Luke Hayseed and how he has tricked and evaded the evil Mr. Toppit in the Darkwood. Mr. Toppit is not only evil but he is cruel, invincible, invisible and, like the worst dreams of a child’s nightmares, ever-present. There are five books in the series and, though Arthur has a publisher, these books have not done very well and are not well known.

One day, Arthur is walking down the street and gets run over by a truck. Laurie Clow, an American tourist in London who has a part-time radio show in Modesto, California, sees what happens and goes to Arthur’s side. She stays with him until he’s placed in an ambulance. Arthur dies from the injuries and, somehow, Laurie manages to get herself invited to the family home and becomes an indispensable fixture. There is Martha, Arthur’s flaky and obtuse wife, with secrets up the yin-yang. Then there is Rachel who, left out of her father’s books entirely, lives her life abusing drugs and experimenting with life on the wild side. Luke, up to this time, has lived his life as a relatively conforming child. He has not yet become famous. This is about to change. There is also Lila, a laugh-out-loud funny character, who has been the artist for the books. She hates Laurie and will go to any length to try and get her out of Hayman’s home. Lila is histrionic and a hypochondriac, a mixture that garners some good laughs.

As the book opens Luke is twelve years old and Rachel is sixteen. Laurie returns to Modesto and decides to read the books live on her radio show. This creates a sensation and the books become mega-sellers – think Harry Potter, Wizard of Oz, Winnie the Pooh. Charles Elton, during an interview, stated that one of the reasons he wrote this book is that he wondered what happens to the characters that books are based upon in mega-sellers such as Winnie the Pooh. Meanwhile, Laurie moves to San Francisco and then Los Angeles where she has a syndicated television show. Her contact with the Haymans is much less but they live with the fallout of their instant fame.

Once Laurie reaches her zenith of fame, the book slows down and the story becomes more drawn out and less immediate. The reader is privy to Luke’s struggle with his own identity as Luke Hayman and NOT Luke Hayseed. He spends a lot of time trying to track down his sister who is often out of contact. He reflects on how his life would have been different if he was not known as Luke Hayseed. And why did his father write just about him? There was plenty of room to share with his sister. By the time the book ends, Luke is a university student and Rachel is a young woman. Family secrets abound and many of them are revealed in part two. However, there are parts of the book that are just left hanging and don’t come together, parts I was waiting to learn about – like Laurie’s relationship with her friend that went sour. What happened with Martha and Ray?

The book is immensely readable. I went through the close to 400 pages in three days and felt like I really had a sense of each character. Charles Elton is an author to watch. He has a wonderful ear for dialogue and a wonderful gift of imagination.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 32 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press; 1 edition (November 9, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	BookPage interview with Charles Elton
EXTRAS:	Excerpt (see look inside on publisher’s page)
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Not the same, but still a childhood affected by a fictional hero: Dream City by Brendan Short

Bibliography:

• Mr. Toppit (2009; November 2010 in US)

“Boone wakes before dawn and can’t get back to sleep. He tosses and turns for an hour or so, his mind swirling with thoughts of Oscar Rosales. The kid was no saint, but by all accounts he was trying to do the right thing by Maribel and the baby, trying to get his life on track. So how, then, did he wind up being mauled, and who frightened him so badly that he refused to seek treatment for the wounds? Exactly what kind of craziness did he run into out there in the desert?”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (DEC 18, 2010)

Jimmy Boone is a certain kind of maverick – out of the box and not quite a civilian. After serving his time in the Marines, Boone becomes a partner in a security firm. He works as a bodyguard for the rich and famous. He spends his time in Hollywood, Hawaii, Aspen or wherever those with money gather. It is his job to protect and defend them. However, one of his jobs goes awry. Jimmy believes that his client is sexually molesting his daughter and beats him to within an inch of his life. Jimmy later finds out he was set up by the man’s wife as part of a mean divorce. The man he almost killed may have been innocent. Jimmy goes to jail and, when This Wicked World opens, Jimmy is out on probation. He is bartending by night and acting as super of an apartment complex.

Robo, the bouncer at his bar has a side job for him. Robo has been contacted by the father of Oscar Rosales, a Guatemalan refugee who has died as a result of infected dog bites all over his body. Nobody knows what happened to Oscar. Oscar’s father offers Robo three hundred dollars to find out how Oscar died. Robo asks Jimmy along to meet with Oscar’s father and Jimmy agrees to go with him.

Jimmy is a moral man but he doesn’t believe in living his life by the rules. You might think of him as someone who likes to go outside the lines when he colors because the pictures are prettier that way and it makes for better art. Jimmy is his own man, a moral outlaw. He may not go by the rules, but he has a strong sense of ethics and knows right from wrong. He wants to do right but not because he is forced to by some bureaucracy or by the law. He has to see the point of things.

After meeting with Oscar’s father and meeting Oscar’s wife and child, Jimmy becomes obsessed with finding out the truth about how Oscar was killed. He sees this as personal salvation, a way to make up for almost killing a man.  Jimmy also hopes that his pursuit for the truth will right another  wrong; the security firm he was a partner in has been having a very hard time as a result of  his nearly killing that man on the job.  The firm no longer can attract the same rich and famous clientele that they had in the past. Jimmy wants to redeem himself as the owner is his friend.

Jimmy’s search for the truth leads him to the desert east of Los Angeles where dog fights are held, involves him with criminals who are way past the line of redemption, and puts him in the line of fire where his own life is at risk.

One of the author’s gifts is his ability to delve out the personality of every character. Even the criminals garner some empathy or pity. The reader sees the frailty, damage, and trauma behind the bad guys’ thinking. We don’t want to like them but we can offer them the gift of belief and vulnerability.

This is Richard Lange’s first novel and it is a good one. I was especially impressed by the characterizations and sense of place that he evoked. I felt like I was in L.A. and that I knew why good girls went bad or why bad men stayed bad. I had a sense of who everyone in the book was – – really was – – a skill that many authors are not able to deliver. Usually mysteries don’t stay with me too long. This one will stick around.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 13 readers
PUBLISHER:	Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (May 17, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Richard Lange
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Lange’s writing style has been compared to this one: Lush Life by Richard Price

Bibliography:

• Dead Boys: Stories (August 2007)
• This Wicked World (June 2009)

“Sometimes she sees her life as a series of set pieces rolling in and then out again, realistic enough to fool the camera but unable to withstand closer examination. Any inspection would reveal the flatness of everything, the false walls and painted-on doorknobs, the paper and paste in which everything is rendered. She would like to see it as the camera would see it. And so she keeps her distance. ”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (DEC 14, 2010)

For the longest time, growing up in rural Virginia, Birdie Baker is convinced she is destined to follow the path set forth by her devout Christian parents. Like them, as a Jehovah’s Witness, she will spread the word of the Lord, marry, settle down and wrap it up. But the sense of unease that plagues her even after she is married to a church-going man named Judah, is worsened when she runs into her high school drama teacher at the grocery store. “What are you still doing here?” he asks, “I figured the next time I saw you it would be in a movie.” Eventually, leave Virgina she does. Birdie pools all her savings toward a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles.

When the story first finds Birdie in LA, she is nearly 30 (although she is told to set her age as 26) and struggling to make it big. She does mainly “appendage work, a glorified crash test dummy” where parts of her body fill in for more famous actresses’. Her biggest break—if you can call it that—has been in a commercial for fabric softeners.

The wheels of success might be moving too slowly for Birdie’s satisfaction, but her devoted agent Redmond, promises her bigger and better things are just around the corner. “These things progress organically,” he points out. “Organically?” she says, “Are we farming? Do me a favor. Make it fast and artificial.”

Forever on the cusp of success, Birdie must schmooze at endless parties and try to make an impression. Word-of-mouth, after all, is big here in Hollywood. It is at one of these parties that she meets 21-year-old Lewis, another struggling actor who is even worse off than she is. Lewis works at one temp job after the other, hoping to land a job—any job in the movies.

Author Jenny Hollowell does a spectacular job here with her debut novel. Her prose is sparkling, crisp and edgy all the while moving the story relentlessly forward. There are heartbreaking moments in the novel—Lewis’ excitement at finding a job as an extra on a set and his subsequent letdown is a wonderful example.

In an interview at the end of the book, Hollowell explains that she sought to shine light on how as adults, we “struggle to navigate the disparity between our parents’ expectations of us and the life we imagine for ourselves.” She achieves this objective wonderfully. Birdie is endlessly racked with guilt at having left—at cutting loose the strings that once held her so strongly.

The city of Los Angeles too is a vibrant entity here. As she describes one Hollywood party, Hollowell writes: “The city lies supplicant beneath the party, its lights sparkling and winking as if it existed solely for the partygoers’ enchantment, just another lovely accessory that would be packed up along with the rented glassware and returned at the end of the night.” At the same time, not all is glitz and glamour in the city. She also wonderfully writes about the squalor of LA and sees how from a distance (the Hollywood Hills) even this chaos can be “transformed into something twinkling and lovely and benign.”

For all its despair and bleakness, Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe has its share of cutting humor. This is not a book that is all doom and gloom.

There are many cinematic scenes in here and Birdie even instructs Lewis to imagine that life is just a series of scenes—it makes the disappointment more bearable, she says. In a movie she watches, Birdie describes the end “as it always is, a road leading into the unseen distance, implying both hope and hopelessness.” The same ending applies to Hollowell’s wonderful novel.

Told in brief chapters with absolutely readable, edgy prose, Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe is a novel that deserves a wide audience. A character in the novel defines the word “lovely” as “beauty with a dimension of grace.” By that very definition, Jenny Hollowell’s novel is very, very lovely indeed.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 8 readers
PUBLISHER:	Holt Paperbacks; First Edition edition (June 8, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poormina Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jenny Hollowell
EXTRAS:	Excerpt and Q&A
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another to try: Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas

Bibliography:

• Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe (June 2010)

“It always bothered Bosch when he saw justice and the law being manipulated by smart lawyers. His part of the process was pure. He started at a crime scene and followed the evidence to a killer.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (OCT 5, 2010)

Michael Connelly brings together criminal defense attorney Michael (Mickey) Haller and his half-brother, the cynical and battle-scarred LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, in Connelly’s latest legal thriller, The Reversal. Mickey calls himself “the defender of the damned,” a job he has had for over twenty years. “During that time,” he states, “I’d grown a suspicion and distrust of prosecutors and police….” Still, the Los Angeles District Attorney convinces Mickey to become an independent special prosecutor in the second trial of forty-eight year old Jason Jessup. The defendant has spent twenty-four years in San Quentin for abducting and strangling twelve-old Melissa Landy. Over the last two decades, Jessup has vociferously proclaimed his innocence while filing numerous motions and appeals in an attempt to have his conviction overturned.

Because of possible irregularities during the first prosecution as well as new DNA evidence, the California Supreme Court reversed Jessup’s conviction and sent the case back to Los Angeles County “for either retrial or dismissal of the charges.” Against his better judgment, Mickey agrees to prosecute Jessup, partly because it will give him an opportunity to work with deputy district attorney Maggie McPherson (one of his two ex-wives) and investigator Harry Bosch.

Jessup has a groundswell of support from the liberal media and an organization of lawyers known as the Genetic Justice Project. Although the physical evidence against the defendant is a bit shaky, the eyewitness testimony of Melissa’s sister, Sarah, who was thirteen when the murder occurred, has never wavered. Now thirty-seven, Sarah still stands by her identification of Jessup as Melissa’s abductor. However, Sarah has a history of drug use and run-ins with the law which the defense will undoubtedly exploit in an attempt to discredit her.

This is one of Connelly’s most suspenseful and engrossing legal thrillers in years. It has incisive and realistic dialogue, compelling courtroom scenes, well-drawn characters, a smooth and lucid prose style, and an absorbing, well-constructed plot. The only false note is that when Mickey is on the scene, he is the first-person narrator; the rest of the time, Connelly writes in the third person. This is slightly jarring; Connelly might have been better off sticking to the third person throughout. In any event, Haller shares the spotlight with Bosch and McPherson. In addition, FBI profiler Rachel Walling makes a strong cameo appearance when Bosch asks for her help in analyzing Jessup’s behavior. Harry stands out as the person most invested in nailing Jessup, partly because he is the single parent of a cherished daughter, and partly because he has worked tirelessly on hundreds of homicides during his thirty-five year career as a cop. He is passionate about finding the bad guys and putting them away so that they cannot do any more damage.

In The Reversal, the author demonstrates how politics and public opinion influence the legal process; how the stress of trying a high-profile case can lead to mistakes in judgment; and how, no matter how carefully they plan, lawyers and detectives should expect the unexpected. Readers who enjoy feel-good endings may balk at the novel’s disquieting finale. Others may find Connelly’s conclusion thought-provoking, daring, and original. It certainly demonstrates how life’s vicissitudes and the capriciousness of fate can undermine the search for truth and pervert the course of justice.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 94 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company (October 5, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Michael Connelly
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	MostlyFiction (like many others) are great fans of Michael Connelly. As such, we have reviewed a lot of his books over the years: For these Harry Bosch reviews, go here: City of Bones, Lost Light, The Narrows, The Closers, Echo Park, and The Overlook For a review his latest Harry Bosch, Nine Dragons, go here. For these Michael Haller reviews, go here: The Lincoln Lawyer and Brass Verdict For these stand-alone mysteries, go here: Bloodwork and Chasing the Dime And go here for a  review of The Scarecrow

Bibliography:

LAPD Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch Series

• The Black Echo (1992)
• The Black Ice (1993)
• The Concrete Blonde (1994)
• The Last Coyote (1995)
• Trunk Music (1997)
• Angels Flight (1999)
• A Darkness More than Night (2001) *
• City of Bones (2002) /
• Lost Light (2003)
• The Narrows (2004) ***
• The Closers (2005)
• Echo Park (2006)
• The Overlook (2007)
• Nine Dragons (2009) ****

Mickey Haller:

• The Lincoln Lawyer (2005) /
• The Brass Verdict (2008) **
• The Reversal (2010) **
• The Fifth Witness (2011)
• The Gods of Guilt (October 2013)

Other:

• The Poet (1996) ***
• Blood Work (1998) *
• Void Moon (2000)
• Chasing the Dime (2002)
• The Scarecrow (2009)

* Terry McCaleb is in these novels
** Harry Bosch is in these novels
*** The Poet is in these novels.
****Mickey Haller is in this novel

Nonfiction:

• Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers (2006)

Movies from Books:

• Blood Work (2002)
• The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)