Echo Park by Micheal Connelly

Harry Bosch #12. Harry & Kiz Rider are still partners in the Open-Unsolved Unit. They have been working cold cases while Harry continues to pull his own cold case files from time to time to see if he can solve one of his own unsolved cases. He does this in his "down time". One of the cases that has always bothered him was the disappearance of a 22 year old woman, Marie Gesto, whose car was found in an unused garage of an apartment building 13 years previously. Presumed dead, her body was never found and neither was the killer. Now, a man who was pulled over by the police due to a license plate error (the license plate number was entered incorrectly, so the police officer thought it was a stolen car) had two large garbage bags on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Inside the garbage bags were two women cut up into pieces. This man's name is Raynard Waits. He is charged with the murder of these two women, but said that he killed Marie Gesto too and that he could lead them to her body if they took the death penalty off the table. He said he could lead them to another male victim's body as well and tell them about six more murder victims.

Harry doesn't want to make a deal with him initially, but eventually realizes that it's important to find these missing people so that their families finally know what happened to their loved ones. Raynard says he needs to lead Harry & Co to Marie's body since they wouldn't be able to find it on their own. They agree to this plan, but Raynard will be in chains and heavily guarded. Raynard does lead them to Marie's body, but on the way back to the vehicles, things goes awry. Two police officers are killed, Kiz in seriously injured, and Raynard escapes.

These books always have twists and turns in the story that you know will be coming, but you don't know when or in what direction they will lead the story next. That's what I love about them. Things are never what they seem to be. Even Harry has a hard time figuring out how Raynard's escape actually happened, what happened with Kiz (who was standing near Raynard when he grabbed an officer's gun and killed him and his partner), and if someone on the police department was involved in this escape.

One thing that is really consistent with Harry, is that he always manages to trash his relationships with women he genuinely cares about. In this book, he reconnects with Rachel Walling from the FBI. Things are going really well with them, until they aren't. Typical Harry.

Wendy's Rating: ****