Also, Connelly's Female of the Week Book don't come across as FotBs at all. They're so layered and have so much depth that I actually like them and sort of wish them well, though this might have something to do with the fact that Bosch manages to be utterly lovable in a strange mustachioed-tiny-ball-of-man-angst kind of way, and I want him to find happiness with someone — anyone. Dead Guy Junior: McCaleb was so taken with "Cielo Azul", the name Bosch gave to an anonymous murder victim, that he named his daughter after her. 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. McCaleb, for the first time in all his experiences as an investigator, has a murder suspect come to him to help clear his name. Had McCaleb truly missed something, or was this "the last manipulation of a desperate man?" The second storyline is about a courtcase against a bigshot Hollywood producer who had the guts to admit to Bosch he had killed somebody but would get away with it. The courtcase's star-witness is Harry Bosch.

Bosch's former Friends with Benefits sex partner Teresa Corazon is still slicing up bodies at the coroner's office.Bosch, on the other hand, is the classic lone wolf, with all the impedimenta that role means in popular fiction. "He was ready, ready to dance with the devil once more. He realized that his mission in life was all about moments like these. Moments that should be savored and remembered but that always caused a tight fisting of his guts." Like all heroes, Bosch lives for the "times he had glimpsed the normally hidden face of the monster." So there’s some playfulness in addition to the (from the title) predictable darkness in this volume, #7, A Darkness More Than Night (2000), the most recent Bosch novel. Just when we were settling into a kind of comfortable predictability of form, this book is told, for more than half of the book, from the perspective of retired FBI detective Terry McCaleb who is volunteering his talents on a case where the agency came to him for help. I looked up McCaleb and see that there is a previous novel featuring McCaleb (and no Bosch at all?).

I really like the fact that I can read through an entire novel without wanting to stab the token fictional female character with a spork. As McCaleb works on his profile he learns of the connection between Edward Gunn and Harry Bosch. He also discovers that the ritualistic murder scene resembles a painting by Hieronymous Bosch. McCaleb soon realizes that the profile points to Harry Bosch. How far would Harry go to see that Edward Gunn did not get away with murdering the prostitute? Terry knows that one suspect is the killer when he looks at the suspect's book shelf and sees a copy of The Collector.

Help

As the noose tightens around Bosch, the ex-profiler finds Harry Bosch on board his sailboat in Catalina. Bosch has broken in and has gone through all of McCaleb's papers. He knows all that McCaleb knows. Bosch is now a desperate man. Still, McCaleb is astonished when Bosch tells him, "You missed something." That he is innocent. That he has been set up to take a fall.