by Michael Connelly, 2005
LOVED this book! I love the way Michael Connelly writes. His crime dramas are meticulously detailed but so suspenseful. They are never graphic or explicit, ugly or dirty. The character, Harry Bosch, is so kind and well-meaning and professional and good. He teams up with his former partner, Kiz Rider (black female) whom I loved also. They solve the cold case (“Open-Unsolved”) murder of a 16 year old girl, Rebecca Verloren, in 1988. It’s 17 years later. They have a DNA match for a Roland Mackey. They find him, working at a Tow Truck company. They get approval for wire-tapping and they use an article in the paper that the case has been reopened due to a DNA match, to make him nervous and hope he makes some phone calls. It works – too good – the actual murderer reads the article and manages to kill Roland Mackey by squishing him between his car and a the tow truck. Harry and Kiz are there right after it happens but the murderer is gone.
Harry figures out who the real murder is – it’s Gordon Stoddard. He is now the principal of the school Rebecca went to. He was her teacher then. It is amazing how Harry and Kiz figure it out – by looking at the phone logs into the Tow Truck company from the wire-tap. Then, because Harry is so observant, and he had seen a post-it note at the Tow Truck company the day before that Roland was trying read (he is dyslexic) that said Visa called to verify his employment. They figured out that that call was made by the real murderer to see if he worked there. The way they figured that out was by calling the tow truck company listed in the yellow pages right above that one and asking them if someone had called yesterday from Visa asking about Roland Mackey. Sure enough, someone had. So then they knew the phone call coming in at 1:40 was from the murderer – only it wasn’t – it was from a student at the high school. Turns out her phone was confiscated and was in the Principal’s office all day-the principal used it to make the phone call. He was the murderer. AMAZING – page-turner. Loved it!
This book I got from Mom. After she moved into Parkwood Estates, she had it (must have gotten it from the Little Free Library on Columbia) and she said it was so good she couldn’t stop reading it. I think it is the last book she read that she really understood.