The Narrows
Michael Connelly
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Little, Brown & Co.
ISBN: 0316155306

FBI Agent Rachel Walling gets the call she's dreaded & expected. The serial killer, The Poet, has resurfaced.

Retired LAPD detective Harry Bosch also gets a call. His is from the widow of Terry McCaleb, (whom we met in Blood Work) an ex-partner who has recently died of heart failure on board his charter boat, far out at sea where no hope of rescue was possible. Six year before, McCaleb become famous when he went in search of the killer of his heart donor. The autopsy toxicology screen indicates none of the drugs McCaleb had to take to suppress rejection of the new heart, & which everyone saw him take religious each day, were in his system. Who doctored his pills? & why?

Agent Walling, exiled to the Dakotas after her failure to capture or kill The Poet in Amsterdam, is called to the middle of the Mojave Desert by an agent she once mentored. Given explicit instructions that she may not run the investigation, Agent Walling fumes at the restriction. Complicating this uneasy spectator role is the knowledge that Robert Backus has specifically set her up, again. A GPS system had been mailed to her care of the FBI, which led them to the buried bodies. No identification, no clues. Who were all these men? When were they killed? & why?

Bosch is back, as too Agent Walling. This time their paths cross as they warily compare notes, & set out to track The Poet down, down to a bookstore in Los Angeles during a rainstorm when the river is in full spate, tearing through The Narrows.

Written from The Poet's, Agent Walling's & Bosch's points of view, The Narrows skitters across the landscape of Nevada & California as a serial killer, both familiar & unrecognizable, draws the two veteran investigators closer & closer.

While a hair-raising thriller, Bosch's detours into angst-ridden romance leave much to be desired as he doesn't have a way with women, & the women he does have his way with are as hard-boiled & liable to pick a fight as he. His saving grace is his daughter.

Here's hoping Harry Bosch takes up that three-year option & gets back into harness at the LAPD.

All the same, a satisfying mystery, one in which an evil fellow meets his just reward!

More from Michael Connelly:
Lost Light
Void Moon
Trunk Music
City of Bones
Chasing the Dime
The Last Coyote
Angels Flight
The Harry Bosch Novels: The Black Echo/The Black Ice/The Concrete Blonde & many more!
(06/13/04)

Rebecca