The Crossing by Michael Connelly

"I work a case for you -- not just you, any defense lawyer -- and it'll undo everything I did with the badge"
-- Harry Bosch in The Crossing (Little, Brown and Company, 2015).

Michael Connelly is a master of the roman policier.  I discovered his books at the bookstore Partners & Crime a good number of years ago and continue to read everything he publishes.  What makes his books good is character, environment, and detail.  Plot is something I care less about but it is also something Connelly does well.  The Crossing is mainly about retired detective Harry Bosch (Harry is short for Hieronymous, which only a few appreciate) and somewhat about Micky Haller, the defense attorney who is suing the police department on Harry's behalf; Micky is Bosch's half-brother.

Bosch is asked by Haller to investigate a murder of which Haller's client has been accused.  Bosch is initially reluctant to take the case but finally does, less for the money he needs to continue restoring a 1950 Harley and for paying his daughter's college tuition than for his increasing feeling that Haller's client may be innocent, in which case the real culprit needs to be caught. I wonder how true it is that every defense lawyer feels his client is being railroaded and every police detective thinks that the guy he caught did it.  Bosch's character is part of a police environment where there is much chicanery in the pursuit of so-called justice.  Bosch "knew every trick there was when it came to planting obfuscation and misdirection in a murder book" and of course this knowledge is useful when Bosch goes to work for the defense after he finds out that Haller's client's alibi was murdered. 

The Crossing is rich with appropriate detail about the houses, neighborhoods and restaurants of Los Angeles, as well of the necessity and nuisances of motorcars.  Bosch is successful in this case because of his dedication to chasing down every detail, especially those that raise questions.  In The Crossing he follows the trail of an expensive watch that the murder victim's husband had given her, paying six thousand dollars for it at an estate sale. (I assume people buy such expensive watches so that when they leave their BMW people will still know how well-off they are).  This leads to a couple of cops who are running an extortion racket and killing people who get in their way.