The Overlook (Harry Bosch Series)

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Over eighty million copies of Connelly’s books have sold worldwide and he has been translated into forty-five foreign languages. He has won the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Macavity Award, Los Angeles Times Best Mystery/Thriller Award, Shamus Award, Dilys Award, Nero Award, Barry Award, Audie Award, Ridley Award, Maltese Falcon Award (Japan), .38 Caliber Award (France), Grand Prix Award (France), Premio Bancarella Award (Italy), and the Pepe Carvalho award (Spain) . A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. This is a fairly fast read; all the action takes place in one part of LA - which Harry mentions a few times. The setting is one I know from reading this series, same for Harry and a few 'regulars,' but there are a lot of new people to spice things up. If the animosity that exists between the LAPD and the FBI in the book is a reflection of real life it's a miracle that any crimes ever get solved. Connelly starts off with a detective named Harry Bosch, who receives a call at midnight about a murder case. A man was found dead near the Overlook above the Mulholland dam. Authorities believe that it was an execution style murder because the victim was found face down. The authorities believed that the radioactive materials was a motive for the crime to be committed, but in the end it is a whole different story. Looking through Dr. Kent’s phone the detectives saw a picture of Alicia Kent tied up. Once Walling and Bosch find Alicia Kent hogtied, the ties were taken off leaving her wrists purple. Soon after that, detectives find Alicia Kent’s missing car in front of a suspected terrorist home. Police raid the home and kill the man because he was holding a gun, preparing to shoot the officer.

Dr. Kent’s discovery of a new “radioactive substance” usage is growing in LA county Hospitals & other hospitals for potential money growth. Another outing for Harry Bosch, shorter than most (even shorter than I expected, as the Kindle version ended at about 88%, the rest of it filled with the first half dozen chapters of Two Kinds Of Truth, which I personally find irritating, but oh well). The book is a great mystery and at the same time a big complaint about politics of fear that rules over common sense. And in this book as always the common sense is Harry Bosch.I re-read ECHO PARK [2006] (Harry Bosch Novel 12) this past summer, one of my very favorites among the first dozen installments of the book series. I decided to read at least one more in the series before the end of this year and decided upon a re-read of THE OVERLOOK [2007]. I first read this story when it was serialized in the New York Times Magazine. Following that, Connelly expanded the story and published it as a novel. I remember enjoying the serialized version, but, as one would expect, the novel winds up being a fuller and richer experience.

Como última recomendación, creo que para el lector que no lo haya leído en orden, sería importante que antes de leer este volumen leyeran el anterior, “Echo Park”, para no perderse algún detalle importante. In this book there is one chapter/situation in which Connelly really draws a scary picture of the kind of damage terrorism has done and how the trust and freedom of speech & religion gets trampled because with the current mood in the US officially sanctioned murder gets swept under the rug. It is a really well written chapter in the book and great is my relief to see the main characters being disgusted about what happened. Question: The Overlook was originally serialized in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. For the publication of the novel you were able to re-write the story without the magazine’s space constraints. How was the experience of revisiting the story? The killers almost got away with the perfect crime. They assumed that the threat of a terrorist act would easily overwhelm the truth—that this murder was a classic case of a spouse killing a spouse over sex and money. Do you believe the killers would have successfully gotten away with the murder if the cesium had never been found in the Dumpster by Digoberto Gonzalves?

The Overlook

No one needs to sing Michael Connelly’s praises. The guy is as solid as his lead detective. Connelly plots the story perfectly and brings it home with all the self-confidence and easy storytelling of a master.” As Harry examines the scene, he is surprised by the arrival of F.B.I. agent Rachel Walling. Walling indicates that the victim, Kent, was a medical physicist who was on a list kept by the federal government. She initially refuses to tell Bosch why Kent was on the list or why she is interested in the case, and insists that they should get to Kent's house A.S.A.P. At this point, the key elements of the case come together for Bosch, and as he explains them to Walling, the second, implicit narrative of The Overlook becomes apparent to the reader. Bosch had been troubled by the fact that Stanley Kent’s murderers had spared his wife, and he realizes now that she has actually conspired in the murder. The recoveredand potentially incriminatingposter that had hung in the Kents’ workout room pictured a yoga pose identical to the presumably painful position in which Bosch and Walling had found Alicia tied. The robbery of the cesium was a red herring. Whoever had worked with Alicia Kent had realized that in the current climate of suspicion, authorities would seize upon the robbery as the work of terrorists. The information Alicia had supplied about her alleged assailants, coupled with the presence of her car in front of Samir’s house, would make the terrorist angle irresistible to credulous authorities. If Gonzalves had not found the cesium and the other evidence hours before trash was collected, it would all have disappeared into a landfill. Well Harry keeps looking around the doctor's house. Something isn't right there and I loved this part because, as a reader, you become Harry. You see what he sees and yep, you know things aren't right and had I read 1001 crime mysteries instead of only 1000 I might have seen what Harry didn't. (I didn't.) Bosch is very negative in this volume, making the point that the FBI and LAPD are more competitive than cooperative. He spends a lot of time (way too much time) griping about the FBI in this one

Throughout the book, there are many genre conventions incorporated in the story. One of those was a red …show more content… The final chapters contain chases and twists galore - even so, there is time for some of that hard-nosed poetry which makes Connelly a cut above his competitors * EVENING STANDARD * Harry Bosch, the lead detective on the case, who is the principal protagonist of this and twelve previous Harry Bosch novels. Dr. Stanley Kent killed, shot 2 times in head, in his “rich” Mulholland Drive home. His wife found naked & “hog-tied”. What & Why?

Michael Connelly does his token terrorism story. And it would not be true to him to make it a political mess and power struggle among the various organisations that want to show the world and their constituency how great they are at the wheel of a real threat. Among them Harry Bosch with a new partner that just wants to solve a the murder that starts of the whole story. And Harry gets mighty annoyed when the murder is considered less important than the threat of some terrorism. But I will say this, I did get one thing right about the solution to all this. Just one thing, though Connelly had to twist that around, too. Anyhow, add in the FBI and other government agencies that get all tied up in tangles over who's jurisdiction this is and that, ad infinitum. There's also a terrorism angle and stolen cesium, a radioactive element you just don't want to play with. Add in an old 'flame' of Harry's who IS an FBI agent, and superiors who are always warning Harry not to do this or that while simultaneously telling them to get working, fix this, do your job, find the killer. Blah blah. These are tropes so old and tried and true there must be some truth to them irl. One think I like is the way Connelly confronts the "every Arab is a terrorist" assumption of many post9/1. Michael Connelly: I try to make these books as realistic as possible without hindering the drama of each story. The events at the end of Echo Park I think would realistically require a major internal investigation to make sure that Harry acted appropriately. So I would say that Harry’s been waiting out an investigation and chomping at the bit to continue his mission. I don’t want to give away anything from Echo Park but it was pretty clear by the end that Harry would need to be assigned a new partner. In The Overlook he is teamed with a young detective he can mentor. I hope Ignacio Ferras is around for at least a few more books.