Michael Connelly writes about crime fiction and detective mysteries and has innumerable fans across the globe, including Bill Clinton! The Lost Light takes that same theme and was slated as one of the Best Books of 2003 by the Los Angeles Times.

Chaste Hero: Bosch tells Kiz he's not interested in meeting someone new because he's leaving the door open for Divorce Is Temporary. Moot because the "someone new" in question is Jaye Winston, who's actually just investigating Bosch. As soon as he hears who it is, he puts two and two together. The book begins with sheriff's deputy, Jaye Winston, bringing Terry a current murder case file that scares her deeply. It involves a gruesome murder with bizarre and dark artistic elements that makes her think a serial killer may be at work. Jaye asks Terry to look over the case file and let her know his thoughts because the police are getting nowhere on it. However, the trouble begins after Terry performs his analysis and the clues point him towards a certain police officer that he knows from a previous investigation before retiring – LAPD’s own Harry Bosch. Obviously Bosch is a flawed and imperfect man, and that is why he is compelling and interesting and his series didn't stop at a duology, Twobook McWho. But a sadistic killer he is not. There's never a single doubt in my mind on this point, no matter how hard TERRENCE tried to force it all to fit. And it was so frustrating that he tried so hard to make it fit. Being forced to watch him "work" this case was exhausting to my eyes because they kept trying to roll out of my skull every 2 minutes or so as the logical leaps and fallacies abounded.

Book Summary

Saying Too Much: How Bosch accidentally reveals that he knew who killed Gunn and let the Storey conspiracy happen. The novel really begins to move along once Connelly gets past writing about Bosch’s mission. Bosch is most interesting when he’s dealing with others. Particularly enjoyable are those scenes when we follow Bosch as he tries to interview suspects and find clues, and it is interesting to see Bosch’s journey from being an outsider to an insider. The interactions with characters are very dark and moody and add to the elements of the book. Lead Police Detective: Harry hasn't been on the witness stand for a while, so this is our first chance in several years to hear him explain in so many words what his job is and where it fits in the ranks. As of this novel, he is a Detective 3rd grade, which he explains is equivalent to Detective Sergeant, but that's a rank the LAPD does not use; one step up would be Detective Lieutenant. Also, he specifies that he is the lead detective of a three-detective team at Hollywood division's homicide squad, with some supervisory responsibilities over other officers. I was surprised and delighted by the inclusion of the art of Hieronymus Bosch, which I am familiar with through art class. I also happen to own a jigsaw puzzle version of The Garden of Earthly Delights, one of Bosch's paintings that is referred to in this book!

One Phone Call: A plot point, as McCaleb wonders how Gunn got bailed out of jail when his phone call to his sister was rejected. Surprise, surprise, another top notch book by Michael Connolly. Man, is this guy predictable. I bet he sits there thinking about writing a terrible book and then just laughs it off as it’s easier to come up with a stonking effort. No change with this one. There was a slim hope for me at the start though with a split narrative and one of the leads being from the only Connolly book I have disliked (“Blood Work”). Then Connolly ramps things up to 11 and pushes what could have been a tedious read into the usual top notch affair.Connelly pits his latest series hero, FBI agent Terry McCaleb (Blood Work, 1998), against his veteran series cop, LAPD detective Harry Bosch (Angels Flight, 1999, etc.), in this extraordinary excursion into good, evil, and the labyrinth of human motives. …Bosch fan or McCaleb fan, you can’t lose with this chilling tour-de-force.” Although this book is labeled a “Bosch” book, that is not completely true. It has dual protagonists. This time out Harry shares the stage with Terry McCaleb, ex-FBI profiler, and the lead character in Connelly’s previous book, “Blood Work”. Terry and Graciela Rivers, whose sister provided him with his heart replacement, have married. They have a baby daughter, Cielo, and Terry runs a fishing charter off Catalina island. stars. I had a few complaints, but the series is so good that I’m glad I read it, and I’m on to the next. After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat. In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written. One of the best in the series of 18 about LA Police Detective Harry Bosch. In this 7th installment from 2001, former FBI profiler Terry McCaleb, recovering from a heart transplant covered in Connelly's excellent "Blood Work", is brought in on a brutal ritualistic murder case. His work ends up making Bosch a suspect and threatens to undermine his ongoing efforts in a murder trial of a prominent Hollywood director in an apparent case of rough sex that got out of hand. Thus we get the interplay of a thrilling investigation and an exciting courtroom scenario. Excellent development of the main characters and their motivations and pathways to insight. In the process we get some nice elucidation of noir themes developed by Chandler (the source of the book title). A quote on the corruption process: "When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. You don't go into the darkness without it going onto you and taking its piece. Bosch may have gone in too many times. He's lost his way." A quote on the power of Hollywood to illustrate the dialog of darkness and light:

Connelly reminds us, "Words from a killer were always significant and put a case on a higher plane. It most often meant that the killing was a statement, a message transmitted from killer to victim and then from the investigators to the world as well."As the story unfolds the reader will find a connection between the murder of Edward Gunn and the David Storey trial. What is the connection? Bosch and McCaleb may be the good guys but they deal with monsters. They are human and they have flaws. How does working with the worst humanity has to offer affect them? McCaleb visits Bosch's house and comments that it's changed, then asks if it was destroyed in "the quake." Bosch explains briefly about it being red-tagged and having to be re-built. We Meet Again: McCaleb, word for word, after using the term "UnSub" to refer to Gunn's killer in his notes. Significant Name: Hieronymus Bosch was a Dutch painter who specialized in nightmarish hellscapes. The rather dark nature of the original Bosch's work, as well as elements of several Bosch paintings occurring in Gunn's murder scene, leads McCaleb to take even more interest in Detective Harry Bosch as a murder suspect. Arc Words: It is with this novel that "man on a mission" truly coalesces as Connelly's express characterization of Bosch, though he has made reference to it in past works. Since his normally minimalist narrative style wouldn't really suit such a relatively colorful description in most Bosch novels, here we get it as part of the notes profiler Terry McCaleb took when he first worked with Bosch years ago.

As the case unfolds in court, L. A. County Sheriff's detective Jaye Winston seeks out Terry McCaleb, looking for help on a case that has dead-ended. McCaleb, who was forced to retire after having a heart transplant, is now living quietly, running a charter fishing boat, and carving out a life with his new wife, their daughter, and his adopted son. But he hasn't lost the drive and the curiosity that once made him a leading FBI profiler. It's that bizarre owl that's the centerpiece of McCaleb's investigative efforts. Author Connelly leads McCaleb (and this fascinated reader) on a magnificent journey through "A Garden of Earthly Delights", as it were - a fabulously informative sidebar on the paintings of sixteenth century Dutch Renaissance painter, Hieronymus Bosch. It isn't long before McCaleb and Winston have Harry Bosch in their sights as their sole suspect in Gunn's murder. They've got it figured as Bosch meting out frontier justice because he couldn't corral Gunn within the framework of the legitimate legal system. Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing — a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews. A good deal of the novel is composed of courtroom scenes, with witnesses being questioned and cross-examined, lawyers maneuvering to influence the jury, and so on. Courtroom drama is one of Connelly's favorite tropes, and I always enjoy it, but he goes a bit overboard in this book.....and it slows down the story.

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There is no end of things in the heart. Somebody once told me that. She said it came from a poem she believed in. She understood it to mean that if you took something to heart, really brought it inside those red velvet folds, then it would always be there for you. No matter what happened, it would be there waiting. She said this could mean a person, a place, a dream. A mission. Anything sacred. She told me that it is all connected in those secret folds. Always. It is all part of the same and will always be there, carrying the same beat as your heart. I am fifty-two years old and I believe it.” Thirty-odd years ago I knew this beautiful woman named Marti. We were good friends who never (well, almost never) let the boy-girl thing complicate our friendship. We were always giving each other books to read and music to listen to. special thanks to Raymond Chandler for inspiring the title of the book. Describing in 1950 the time and place from which he drew his early crime stories, Chandler wrote, ‘The streets were dark with something more than night.’ Sometimes they still are”--Connelly