Harry Bosch, Book 4

Okay, now things are getting absurd in this series. Seriously, how the f--- does a cop manage to get a 100% close rate when he's investigating murders that are 30+ years old? I mean, COME ON, how f---ing stupid were people 30 years ago that THEY MISS THE OBVIOUS? Oh, wait, THEY WEREN'T STUPID. There were, of course, cover-ups and shameful acts and people-who-need-to-confess.

Upside, the book wasn't boring like Concrete Blonde was.

Oddly, no tunnels.

I enjoyed this book, too, even if the level of suspension of disbelief was a little high. Coyotes talking to people who haven't had peyote and 30 year old case solved, my foot. Doesn't happen unless the killer confesses on his deathbed.

Harry Bosch, book 3

Okay, this is the third book of the Harry Bosch series, and, well, the most boring and predictable of the three. The previous ones weren't boring, so having to listen to this one at 3x speed to get through it was surprising. The main plot point of the story is Bosch is being sued in civil court for the wrongful death of the Dollmaker from four years previously, a plot point mentioned many times in the previous two books, giving us lots of court scenes and predictable characters: the tough plaintiff lawyer, the bumbling city lawyer, the asshole judge. The plot does give us a way to understand the plot of the Dollmaker murders without having to read about the past, which was a good history fill-in that I liked. The misdirections in the plot, though, were boring enough to be eye-rolling with the obvious clues for the reader to figure out they were immediate misdirections.

My worry is that in three books, I've figured out Michael Connelly's style and the remaining 11 Bosch books will be boring past two. The upside is that the area of Los Angeles that the books take place in, as well as the time, are all familiar to me, making the old books a trip down memory lane.

5 in 7 days

Harry Bosch, book 2

Like Bosch book 1, I've had this book in audio format for two and a half years. I better have bought these on a steep discount, given how long I've had them and not read them. That said, I enjoyed this book, too. Similar to the first book, it had tunnels, bad cops, stupidly annoying and bumbling IAD officers (they can't possibly be this awful in real life), Los Angeles circa-my-era, the dame, and Harry Bosch in his hard-boiled detective glory.

I enjoyed the book and I'll keep reading them until I've read two in a row that suck. So far, this one is good enough to keep going.

Four books in five days. Maybe I should have set last year's 52 books in a year for this year instead.

Harry Bosch, book 1

I bought book fourteen (yes, 14) of the Harry Bosch series. I hadn't quite realized it was book fourteen of the series. The only series where I've read fourteen of the books in the series is the Harry Dresden series, and yes, that Harry is well worth the read. I didn't realize this Harry was up to fourteen books, but, eh, sure, I'll give the series a try. It's not like I don't have a stack of 60 books just waiting to be read on my nightstand or anything.

So, book ONE of the Harry BOSCH, not Dresden, not Potter, series is Black Echo. I swear I've had this book in my audio book list for two and a half years (June of 2012, actually, I just checked, so I'd be right), and have no idea why I haven't read it or listened to it. Fixed that today, and by "today" I mean, "today," because I spent the whole day putzing around the house, cleaning up the yard, and listening to it.

Okay, right, enough rambling, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is set in Los Angeles in the late 1980s with enough similarity to when I was there in the late 1990s, that I knew where everything was. A lot of the scenes in Hollywood were where I had gone to night clubs to listen to new bands coming up, or in the canyons where I had hiked, or along Wilshire where I worked, or UCLA where I went to play ultimate, or along Silverlake where I'd bypass traffic when riding to work, that all of it came rushing back and it was a great. The book is like the old hard-boiled detective novels, with a slight twist at the end, with the good cop (Harry, of course) who everyone suspects of wrong doing because he's sticking to finding the truth even when the bad guys dressed in good guy clothes don't really want him to find the truth.

And wheeeee!

So, the personal connection kept me interested in this book. The references to the Vietnam tunnels provided a history lesson and it was a fun read. I'll read book two, which is good, because I already have it.

Three books in three days. Zoom!

Okay, THIS is the book I needed fifteen years ago. It is a list of baseball terms, in alphabetical order, with some cute illustrations thrown into it. Much of the baseball lingo I've heard Kris use, and a lot of it that I had never heard, was in this book. I was, after reading it, surprised to realize how many terms I did know, which just proves you can learn baseball by osmosis.

The only problem I could find in the book is that it lacked the definition of "High Cheese Ball." I can't understand why such an auspicious term would have been left out of this wonderfully enjoyable baseball lexicon.