Michael Connelly's The Burning Room

Whether it was love or just a base human desire that he had followed, his choices had taken him into the dark waters where politics and murder swirl.
Michael Connelly, The Burning Room (Little, Brown and Company,2014).

I have been reading Connelly since I discovered him almost twenty years ago at the now-departed Foul Play on Greenwich Avenue.  This is the seventeenth Bosch novel and though Bosch is usually called Harry, his actual first name is Hieronymous, after the 15th C. painter who depicted heaven, earth and hell in The Garden of Earthly Delights, now in The Prado in Madrid, where one can spend hours looking at its fascinating detail.  Connelly and Bosch in a sense have done a modern version of the Bosch painting, with their depictions of the heaven, earth and hell of contemporary Los Angeles (though the Bosch novels are written in the third person, everything is seen from Bosch's point of view).

Detective Bosch has now put off his retirement and is a participant in DROP, the deferred retirement option plan, as he uses his experience to help new detectives, in this case Spanish-speaking Lucia Soto, who works with Harry in the Open-Unsolved Unit.  Part of the beauty of Connolly's series is the increasing use of technology in police work as, for instance, they learn how to "ping" cell phones and follow up, while trying to mollify bosses who seem more interested in keeping to the budget than solving crimes; this level of Connelly's novels is something one can identify with:  how to get the job done when the boss is a fool!  Connelly's novels are elegantly plotted and written, with an emphasis on character (even the most insignificant characters have a vivid presence) and detail of personality.  Bosch, for instance is a big fan of jazz and listens often to the likes of Ron Carter.

One of the most significant characters in the Bosch novels is the city of Los Angeles itself, with which Bosch has a love-hate relationship, just as Philip Marlowe did in Raymond Chandler's novels of the 40's, which paint as vivid a picture of the City of Angels then as Connelly's do now.

Incidentally, one of Amazon's TV pilots is Bosch:  Titus Welliver was effectively low-key in the title role; the pilot was co-written by Connolly (based on early Bosch novels) and directed by veteran Jim McKay, who directed episodes  of The Good Wife and In Treatment.