The other one I finished is a detective one and I am just considering if it is worth trying to squeeze this review in before go and watch some telly, go and do my exercises and get ready for bed. Well.. there was not that much to it so yeah.. let's give it a go.
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City of Bones - Michael Connelly
I am in two minds about this one. On the one hand I liked it on the other hand I it annoyed me. I thought it had some strands of story left dangling as an obvious set up to a further book or future story line and that annoyed me a bit.
The story: some old bones are found on a hillside and we accompany Harry Bosch and his partner Jerry Edgar (well mainly Harry actually) in finding the killer. The bones belong to a child and we spend a fair few pages trying to find out who it is and then the rest of the story is about who killed him.
The pain is that we get side tracked by Harry getting involved with a rookie cop who then gets killed and we are supposed to care about that because he cared about her. We have the red herring sneaky neighbour with a dodgy past (no way I was falling for that one!). Then there is the broken up and messed up family of the boy - dad is a drunk and an abuser, mum ran out on the kids as she could not cope and the the daughter was abused and beat up her brother. the sad thing is her brother is the one who ended up dead and we do not even find out exactly what happened and why and none of them seem to care. I care more as a reader!
I think that is the bit that disappointed me most. After all this stuff that is brought into the story, half of which is unnecessary, we still do not know how the kid ended up on the hill, alone and dead. I can make up my own story about it but as I paid for the book I was kind of hoping the Mr Connelly would oblige.
Having said all that. Harry is a nice character, nothing too multi-dimensional but hey.. who cares. He has a sense of humour, he seems to genuinely care for his victims and is not too stereotypically written and that helps the story along no end. The other people he works with are hard working policemen kind of guys and Connelly is not afraid to take a few swipes at the top brass of the police force (hanging with the homeys eh Connelly!). He has a quick, well flowing writing style and I did want to get to the end of the story and find out where the twists would lead me. It was just a bit of a shame that in the end they lead nowhere and with Harry leaving for pastures new we will never find out either will we?
Title: City of Bones
Author: Michael Connelly
409 pages
Orion
ISBN nr 0-75284-834-8
Books to be read: 100
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