Finished up The Black Box by Michael Connelly this week. This novel was published in 2012. It is the sixteenth book in the Harry Bosch series that Connelly first launched twenty years earlier in 1992. Connelly used a murder that occurred during the 1992 Los Angeles riots and Bosch working it as a cold case in 2012 as the timeline for the novel. In many ways, writing this was as much a personal reflection point as storytelling for Connelly. Here is an essay he shared about the book. He also did this video reflecting on it. Although I felt like Connelly took some shortcuts in this one and the end was a little rushed, it was, like always, an enjoyable read.
The Black Box
In a case that spans 20 years, Harry Bosch links the bullet from a recent crime to a file from 1992, the killing of a young female photojournalist during the L.A. riots. Harry originally investigated the murder, but it was then handed off to the Riot Crimes Task Force and never solved. Now Bosch’s ballistics match indicates that her death was not random violence, but something more personal, and connected to a deeper intrigue.
Like an investigator combing through the wreckage after a plane crash, Bosch searches for the “black box,” the one piece of evidence that will pull the case together. Riveting and relentlessly paced, The Black Box leads Harry Bosch into one of his most fraught and perilous cases.