The Crossing: Harry Bosch, Book 18

This book is another terrific read by, of course, The Great Michael Connelly! ! I know that when I start one of his books I had better make sure that I don’t have anything important to do because I can’t put the book down ! Now he has added a new detective for all of his admirers to get interested in ! ! I’m nuts about Harry Bosch and now Renee Ballard has joined the scene and she is terrific !! Definitely buy this book, you will not be disappointed!!!!

Connelly is a fantastic writer and this addition to his Bosch series is Bosch at his best! In The Crossing, we see Bosch in retirement dealing with time on his hands and missing the following of "his personal mission" of finding justice for the unjustly dead by following the clues that bring down their killers.This time he also deals with his own "crossing over to the dark side" as he drawn into working for his defense lawyer brother to find the killers and free the client sitting in jail. The case against him is air tight and trial is expect to be a slam dunk with all evidence (including DNA of the accused on and in the innocent female victim), but to Bosch, some things don't quite fit and "the mission" is on!This novel is great. Cornell's ability weave a fast paced detective novel is unsurpassed. THAT SAID, one thing PISSED ME OFF!NOTE to KINDLE USERS: Pay absolutely no attention to the number one customer review of this book by Phil in Magnolia IT IS FALSE and MISLEADING.It states that the Kindle edition includes at no additional cost the second Lincoln Lawyer book by Connelly at the end of "The Crossing" . It does not! The review was written in 2015, so maybe it included it back then, but apparently does not include it in 2018. The first half of the review (about half a page of it) raves about the incredible bargain of getting the Bosch novel and the Lincoln lawyer novel at one low price in the Kindle edition. He does complain that the Kindle edition quits counting pages after page 394 but the new novel continues complete. Well, it does quit at page 394, but that is because the whole book plus all the accompanying advertisements for other Connelly books ends on page 394 with nothing other than the review link page left. It would seem like false advertising using the Kindle brand and Amazon brand names except it is written by a "verified purchaser". Amazon and Kindle may not be responsible for what people put in there reviews, but they need to pay some attention to the reviews they pipe directly to MY Kindle just as a course of good business practice. Obviously the first review of the novel did not say the novel sucked and wasn't worth the $9.99 price. I suspect a review like that would not be first in the list of reviews.Again, I really enjoyed reading The Crossing, by Michael Connelly. I like the series, having bought and enjoyed all 17 of the prior Bosch novels. My gripe review is about Amazon and Kindle placing a bogus review at the top of their customer review list in order to gain up sales. I don't give flaming reviews, but this hacked me off when I had time on my hands, I think their marketing department needs to get head out of their butts and maybe their computer programmers also. My wife and I are perfect algorithms of targeted marketing in Eliterature. We have 3 Kindles between (had them for years) and buy a lot of Ebooks from the store on our devices. They do not need to market us with phony reviews to get us to buy the things we are already buying. I bet this 5 Star review does not go to top of the customer review list.

In his 20th Harry Bosch novel, Michael Connelly reunites Harry with his half-brother Mickey Haller, the defense attorney from Lincoln Lawyer. Connelly first matched them up in The Brass Verdict (2008). But make no mistake, this is Harry Bosch’s story.Maddie, Harry’s daughter is now 18 years old, within days of high school graduation and already has plans to attend Chapman College, the same school that Mickey’s daughter will be attending. The girls will room together. If you have followed Harry’s story through the years, you know that Maddie has not had it easy and her friendship with Mickey’s daughter seems to be a sign of emotional good health. Likely, it is also a set-up for one or more future Haller and Bosch novels where the girls’ encounter murder on campus or domestic terrorism and the dads come to the rescue. Connelly stays current with the backdrop of his stories.In The Crossing, Harry is now retired from LAPD and suing the department for forcing him into early retirement. When Mickey’s PI, Cisco, is sidelined with an injury after his Harley-Davidson is deliberately sideswiped by a burnt orange Camaro, Mickey asks Harry to step in for Cisco. He needs his help on a case involving a young black male artist with a wife and two sons who was arrested for the brutal beating death of the wife of a sheriff’s deputy. Haller is sure Da’Quan Foster is innocent of the murder of Lexi Parks, killed in her own bed. Harry turns him down, reluctant to commit to the crossing from cop to PI for the defense, thereby spitting in the eye of every LEO in LA and the county and earning their eternal hatred.He goes home to rebuild the 1950 Harley gathering rust in his garage, a project that will occupy his attention for quite some time. With the carburetor dismantled, all the parts cleaned and drying on newspaper, John Handy’s sax playing on the stereo, Harry studies the Clymer manual detailing step-by-step restoration of his vintage Harley. While reaching for a part, Harry realizes the newspaper was one he intended as a keepsake. It showed the former governor with one of his pals, a state assemblyman whose son’s prison term for murder was reduced to seven years by the governor on his last day in office. Harry liked to look it occasionally to remind himself of the strange bedfellows of politics and justice. After some internet research of Lexi’s murder, Harry agrees to read Haller’s case file on Foster, then to be Cisco’s temporary replacement.It is joy for any mystery lover or police drama lover to read a Connelly novel. He is one of if not the best at making police procedure exciting to read. Bosch’s mind is a well-oiled machine and he is tireless in following every loose thread and fitting it into the whole story. He revisits crime scenes, re-interviews witnesses, and immerses himself in the feel of those places, using his instincts but also his very disciplined mind.Mercifully, Connelly reviews all the pertinent data Bosch gathers by having him compose a timeline of all the known and unknown events, loose threads, and things that do not “fit.” He brings the clues altogether for the reader, to organize the story before the climax. There are a lot of characters and a lot of events in this fast-moving story.Bosch’s dogged investigation coupled with Mickey Haller’s formidable lawyering make The Crossing a splendid read for any mystery or suspense fan. This is another home run from Michael Connelly. Harry Bosch, PI – can’t wait for the next one.

This book sees policemen Harry Bosch off the force, after one last run in with his bosses, and working for his half brother.Bosch… lives by his own rules? This can make him… difficult to work with (and read). In this case, which sees him help defend a reformed gang-banger in typically Boschian ways, there is less of this, which makes it easier to read, I think.It’s not ever going to be Dickens or Shakespeare, but if you like murder mysteries that rattle along at a decent clip, you can do a lot worse than this book.

Probably the best fiction detective/defence writer on the planet. I’m on my second read of some of his books which I read some years ago and have fortunately forgotten a lot of the story.

A really good book, Harry is normally a homicide detective. Now, he is a defence investigator. There are multiple murders, and there are cop killers, cop killers who will stop at nothing to prevent Harry from bringing evidence to court to prove a man's innocence and proof that two cop killers are guilty.The cop killers are watching Harry, Harry is at the end of the investigation he's talking to a witness at his business when the cop killers kick the door and bullets start flying everywhere a cop killer gets away the other is injured.Harry goes home only to find the other cop killer us in Harry's home, Harry leaves his gun on his record player the cop killer stands there with his gun raised ..... Great ending.

At the end of The Burning Room we saw Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch being suspended from service for the LAPD after having been caught on film picking the lock to his Captain’s office. There was nothing dubious behand this - he had simply wanted to keep up the momentum of the case he was working, and needed to access an old case file. That counted for nothing, however, and he was put on suspension. As the novel opens, Bosch is still seething, and has hired his brother Mickey Haller, “the Lincoln Lawyer”, to sue for wrongful dismissal. Haller, like Bosch, suspects that the LAPD was looking for any excuse to dismiss him, in order to reduce its exposure to Bosch’s impending retirement pay-off.Bosch quickly becomes bored with so much unaccustomed time on his hands, and meets up Haller who tells him about his current defence case. As a lifelong law enforcement officer, Bosch is generally dismissive of the work that Haller does, believing that defence lawyers undo all the positive work of him and his colleagues designed to take criminals off the street. Haller convinces him that on this occasion, he is absolutely convinced of his client’s innocence and suspects that he has been framed. Bosch grudgingly agrees to help out, crossing what he previously considered to have been an inviolable line, and consenting to act as Haller’s defence investigator.The case on which he is engaged is a difficult one, involving the rape and murder of a senior civic official and wife of a local police sheriff, and seemingly an open and shut case owing to the severely incriminating presence of the defendant’s DNA at the scene. Bosch is very cynical about the defendant’s professions of innocence, but starts to look into the case. After all, if the defendant is indeed innocent, then the actual offender is still at large.Connelly’s tight prose propels the story along, and Bosch soon finds that he has rattled some angry feathers among the law enforcement community, who see his work for a defence attorney as a betrayal of his life’s work. Unusually for Connelly’s Bosch stories, we are also given an insight into the thoughts of the perpetrator. This works well, lending a sense of immediacy to the book.

... his half-brother Mickey Haller and his client. A man who served the law for a long, long time crosses over to help the accused, falsely or not. And this is MY personal opinion - for what it may be worth. Who has an other, please write a review, too...Yet in the last book of the long series The Burning Room (Harry Bosch Book 19) (English Edition) our hero Harry bent the law a bit too much to gather entry into the office of his captain. That did cost him dearly - he throw in the sack and went in retirement.Where he is now sulling along with his remorses and memories. His daughter soon will depart for University, and live together with Haller's daughter. A love-affair with a reporter goes nowhere, only downwards. Harry is obviously more than a bit annoyed...When Haller - who is sueing the LAPD for Harry to obtain his DROP-payments - comes along to ask for help on a case, Harry is reluctant. At first. Then his in-built investigation-mode takes over and he finds himself implicated in a murder-case where serious doubts in the proofs of guilt arise.So Harry says to himsyelf: I am NOT crossing over - I am looking for a killer or killers still on the loose. But he isn't a detective any more...Bad and sad in my eyes is the fact that the readers know from the beginning who the real cuprits are, cold-blooded killers with an own agenda and not a bit of remorse in their bodies. Who take money where they can, and obviously are always one step ahead of Haller and Bosch. Because the two of them are under strict surveillance 24/7. And those killers without a conscience lay traps wherever they like.When the situation is about to escalate, the Intern Affairs starts to have a special interest in Harry Bosch, his actions and his nearest and dearest. But they have an other, more hidden agenda, too. Because not all of the detectives working in Intern Affairs are old, dumb and square-heads...OK - I have to admit it: I cannot suffer that Lincoln Lawyer. He is a personality who strikes certain inner cords, but in the wrong direction. I cannot understand his superbia, his "I am the Greatest". his vanity-carplate IWALKEM. And I can feel in Harry Bosch the same reluctance - but only in the beginnig of the thriller. When he was still on "his" side of the law. But here, everyone seems to make their own laws, despite of what law-books may say about that. And the "Crossing" in itself is a very ambivalent expression, too. In one sense it means the point where the killer meets the victim for the first time. But it also means the crossing-over of Harry Bosch from law-abiding homicide Detective to a handler for the defense lawyer. And then the crossing is also that of our Harry to adoperate means that obviously shall be justified by the purpose. Because Harry lies openly and without hesitation, once he thinks the poor accused had been set up for this murder. And will be surprised red-handed by doing so properly by the husband of the victim, a Sheriff himself. Who is - like me, too - full of repulsion against Harry Bosch. Who once was a knight in white armour for the innocent, and has now crossed over to the adversaries. But it also means the criss-crossing of the killlers - in and out of law-serving mode, but more out than in...I won't tell You more about the crimes that are commited in the ongoing investigation of Harry Bosch. Who likes to know the culprits right from the beginning - please, help Yourself. Who likes Mickey Haller working on and later with Harry Bosch - please, that thriller may be something for You.I found myself thinking of letting go of this series. Because if I want to read law-thrillers I read other authors with nicer protagonists than Haller. If I want my Harry Bosch, I want him as always: With the nose of a bloodhound chasing killers, who are to be found out with good, old criminalistic sense. And maybe a more thrilling show-down, without some helping hand that may ruin with an impulse-action the whole case Harry was working on. And almost pays that fact dearly...So three *** stars only for this Harry Bosch/Mickey Haller dog-and-pony show. Michael Connelly is a perfect writer, but in this book his main actors are flawed, sorry to say that so bluntly.And will I or not buy the next book? I am not so sure about that...