The Black Ice (A Detective Harry Bosch Novel) by Michael Connelly (1993)

My favourite excerpt from the book:  (from Chapter Eleven) ...Out over Studio City, Bosch could see a police helicopter circling, a shaft of white light cast downward on a crime scene somewhere.  It almost seemed as if the beam was a leash that held the circling craft from flying high and away.

He loved the city most at night.  The night hid many of the sorrows.  It silenced the city yet brought deep undercurrents to the surface.  It was in this dark slipstream that he believed he moved most freely.  Behind the cover of shadows.  Like a rider in a limousine, he looked out but no one looked in.

There was a random feel to the dark, the quirkiness of chance played out in the blue neon night.  So many ways to live.  And to die.  You could be riding in the back of a studio's black limo, or just as easily the back of the coroner's blue van.  The sound of applause was the same as the buzz of a bullet spinning past your ear in the dark.  That randomness.  That was L.A.

Backcover blurb:  The corpse in the hotel room appears to be that of a missing LAPD narcotics officer.  Rumours abound that the cop had crossed over - selling a new drug called Black Ice that had been infiltrating LA from Mexico - and the LAPD brass are quick to declare his death a suicide.

Detective Hieronymus 'Harry' Bosch isn't so sure.  Prompted by odd, inexplicable details from the crime scene - and an undeniable attraction to the cop's widow - Bosch starts his own maverick investigation.  An investigation that soon leads him over the border to Mexicali and into a dangerous labyrinth of shifting identities and deadly corruption.

My thoughts:  I am dedicating the month of March to one of my favourite writers of all time, Michael Connelly, and will be reading his earlier books starting with The Black Ice first published in 1993.  Connelly received the Maltese Falcon Award, Japan's highest honour in the mystery field, from the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan in 1995 for The Black Ice - the best hardboiled novel published in Japan.  Simply reviewed, it is cleverly plotted and is a highly credible story.

Thanks to my library for providing the book and for their kind help.

Rating:  5/5