The Black Box (A Harry Bosch Novel, 16) (edició 2012)

Pretty good. A little technical and he's not very good with a teenager. I don't think his daughter is a totally realistic portrayal of a teenage girl.

Detective Harry Bosch investigates another cold case. A twenty year old murder of a foreign reporter during the 1992 Los Angels Rodney King riots. The reporter, Anneka Jespersen, survived reporting on war zones in Kuwait and Iraq and other places. But she was shot dead in Los Angeles. Bosch tracks down the murder weapon in 2012 and this opens clues to a number of other murders. Will he find who killed Jesperson? He's Harry Bosch! ( )

The Black Box is not one of Michael Connelly's best stories. It is lacking in the usual suspense, storyline and awe inspiring research that his books/stories usually contain. Consequently, only three stars are awarded in this brief review. ( )

During the LA Riots, a young Harry Bosch briefly examines the gunshot death of a female Danish freelance photographer who was apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time. The uninvestigated death troubled Bosch and he is pleased to receive the cold case challenge. To Bosch, case momentum is paramount, and he is always seeking the key break in the case (i.e., the "Black Box".) After intensive, diligent police work, he discovers a web of intrigue and violence tracing back to an American unit in the first Gulf War, and their transgressions.
( )

Michael Connelly's Hieronymus Bosch series began with The Black Echo set shortly after LA's 1992 race riots, and many of the novels in the series make allusions to the riots or to events that occurred during them. The Black Box opens during the height of the the riots when Bosch and his partner, Jerry Edgar, come across a shooting victim unlike all other's that chaotic night: Anneke Jespersen, a foreign press photographer, is found shot to death in an alley.
Twenty years later, Bosch picks up the case in open-unsolved and carries it through to its surprising solution. The search is a highly detailed investigative procedure and is often interfered with by departmental politics: the powers that be are concerned for the effect on departmental public relations by the efforts to solve the murder of a white woman when there were so many unsolved murder of blacks at the same time.