|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
A retired physician’s dog brought home a bone he had found in the forest back of Wonderland Avenue and the doctor knew it to be a human bone, the bone of a child. Harry Bosch, who was catching cases on New Years Day, went out to look and saw enough to call in a full crew of people including the medical examiner and an anthropologist. The child had been buried in a shallow grave and many of his bones had disappeared forever, taken by various wild animals. The m.o.'s office said the boy, who looked about ten but was probably thirteen or fourteen, had been the victim of severe and prolonged physical abuse before his death which was classified as murder. First Harry had to identify the body and when that was done, of course, he had to investigate the inhabitants of Wonderland Avenue and the family of the child. In the course of the investigation two more deaths occur, unnecessary deaths had everything been done correctly. As usual in a Connelly book the plot turns and twists and turns back upon itself until finally the solution is revealed. This solution was satisfactorily surprising. During the first part of the book I felt the story was being told without much emotion or feeling. It was straight forward, sometimes unaffected, a bare faced recital of events and circumstances, almost pedestrian indeed. Once the reader got involved in the story of the little boy, however, the emotion came through and the I became very empathetic to the pain and suffering this child must have endured. And it became very important to find out who had inflicted such pain upon him. In any Michael Connelly book the city of Los Angeles becomes a major character. He has an understanding of and an intuition for the city that few other writers possess. Few can make the reader feel as much a part of the restless, throbbing, driving city where the car is king, money is power, and the outrageous is commonplace. The city of bones may be the area where the bones were discovered, but it is also the La Brea tar pits where the bones of the first murder victim of Los Angeles, dead some nine thousand years, was also discovered. And it is the city itself, which has recently surpassed New York City as the murder capital of the United States. Bosch exemplifies any detective or really any policeman. And the rookie, Julia Brasher, also manifests what happens to the police as they try to do their job. There is despair as they realize the horror that surrounds them all the time and the vile and revolting people with whom they have contact. There is cynicism that nothing they do will make a difference. And yet there is utter dedication that they will do whatever they can regardless of how bad it gets. At the soul of this book are children, lost children, abused children, children who fall between the cracks. Children that our society allows to live in pain and degradation and die in fear. This should not happen and we should be very angry and irate that it does. And we should be doing something about it.
Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, November 2002
This book has more than one review. Click here to show all.
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
