Echo Park- review

Originally on my book blog

 

Book: Echo Park | Author: Michael Connelly | Started: 3/12/14 | Finished: 3/18/14 | Rating: 4 stars

 

Synopsis: In 1993 Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket. Harry Bosch worked the case but couldn’t crack it, and the twenty-two-year-old was never found. Now, more than a decade later, with the Gesto file still on his desk, Bosch gets a call from the District Attorney.A man accused of two heinous murders is willing to come clean about several others, including the killing of Marie Gesto. Taking the confession of the man he has sought-and hated-for thirteen years is bad enough. Discovering that he missed a clue back in 1993 that could have stopped nine other murders may just be the straw that breaks Harry Bosch.

 

My review: Harry Bosch once worked a case involving a kidnapped teenager. Thirteen years later, he’s still not sure what happened to her. Now he’s working in Open-Unsolved and has the opportunity to find out what happened to her.

This prologue started out thirteen years prior when he was first alerted of the case. The book then starts off more than a decade later and he’s still caught on the case. Only now, thirteen years later, he finds out that there was a clue he should have seen back then that could have solved the mystery.  So will he solve it now? Or will the guilt make it more difficult for him? I was not expecting this book to turn out the way it did but I loved it nonetheless.

I was trying to find a way to describe Harry and how he deals with cases like this, but then I found the quote in the book. Rachel Walling says “Knowing how I have seen you take a case straight to heart, Harry, I wonder, then, if it is wise for you to be dealing with this man now. ”. That describes Harry Bosch to a T. He gets emotionally invested in these cases and wants nothing more than to see justice being served.

And then someone else says “I don’t know you. I know your type. You have an addictive personality, Detective. Murder cases, cigarettes, maybe even the alcohol I can smell coming out of your pores. You’re not that hard to read.” Connelly writes in a way that other characters will explain the main character for us so we can identify better with the main character. Bosch does have an addictive personality and maybe I didn’t realize until I read this line.

I think this book really showed that side of Harry more than most because the whole book is centered around a case that has been eating at him for 10+ years. All the other books that I’ve read of his start and end in one book. We do get to see how serious he takes his job, but this one showed how emotional he gets about certain cases, especially ones he never solved.

This is my third Connelly book in a row and I’ve said it in every review: Connelly can write characters extremely well. This one was no different. The characters that I was supposed to hate, I hated. The characters I was supposed to love, I loved. The awesome thing about Connelly’s book is that he’s not only a fantastic character writer, but he’s also good at writing relationships between characters. Rachel Walling shows up in this book and I just love them being together. They’re great work partners but not so great at anything else.

The ending made me really sad for reasons that I’m not going to say because I don’t want to give anything away. I just felt that things didn’t end up in certain areas the way that I wanted them to. It’s still a great book and I would definitely read it again. I would recommend it to anyone that likes crime and mystery novels.

Things I got from this book: Rachel Walling needs her own book series. Bosch does take things to heart in a way that most detectives in other book series’ do. The Open-Unsolved Unit books are probably my favourite right now.