Echo Park by Michael Connelly

Echo Park, by Michael Connelly, is another of the Harry Bosch novels. Bosch is a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. He has a tendency to confront his superiors and disregard procedures, but it usually works out because he is such a good detective instincts are so good and because his superiors, being insiders in the L.A.P.D. are so often corrupt. It is a rare Harry Bosch novel that does not shine a harsh light on the Los Angeles Police Department, and this one is no exception to that rule.The story begins with an echo of a case that Bosch had not solved, the Marie Gesto case. Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket. Bosch had approached the case with his typical gusto and had never let it go, but failed to solve it, and now, years later, an accused serial killer seems willing to confess to the murder and lead the authorities to the body. The District Attorney calls Bosch in to interrogate the killer to make certain that he is telling the truth,
since the confession is part of a plea bargain supposed to save the killer from the death penalty.Shortly before the confession begins, one of the D.A.'s assistants calls attention to a clue that Bosch and his partner supposedly missed. A clue that would have led directly to the killer and possibly prevented the other murders the killer committed. The disclosure was designed to knock Bosch off his game, and it does, but Bosch is a relentless pursuer of the truth, and when he discovers that the clue he "missed" had only recently been added (in other words, someone had tampered with the evidence file), a second mystery is added to the first: who did it, and why?The plot to have the serial killer confess to the crime comes to a spectacularly disastrous conclusion, and the killer escapes. When Bosch tracks him down and kills him in a gunfight, though, he senses a bureaucratic hostility that leads him to discover both the actual Gesto killer and the whole story behind the false
confession.Echo Park is a complicated story full of misdirection and varied motivations crafted, as all of Connolly's stories are, with great energy and skill. I cannot remember a single bad guy surviving one his final encounter with Bosch, but in most of the stories Bosch retains a sort of purity. He considers himself a "pure detective." In Echo Park, on the other hand, Bosch cuts a few corners, and he was more than a little cynical about the way he set the final scene. One wonders whether the years of working with the LAPD are taking their toll. Bosch was a much less likeable character by the final chapter than he has been in previous stories about him.

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