Book Series Review - Harry Bosch detective novels by Michael Connelly

While I haven't been painting I have been doing a lot of reading and a little TV watching. I accidentally got hooked on the Harry Bosch TV show and decided to give the books a try. This series is by Michael Connelly which he started in 1995 with The Black Echo. In the TV series the character of Harry Bosch has been updated to a more modern look, in the books you will find that he served in Vietnam before joining the LA Police. Harry is a hard edged detective with the motto of "everybody counts or nobody counts" (a statement made well before the phrase of "black lives matter") and as such is often at odds with both his partners and the administration as he works on case after case.

Bosch is in many ways a very tragic figure, totally devoted to his pursuit of justice yet yearning for things that are seemingly beyond his reach. I enjoyed all the books but I found that the books later in the series are quite a bit better than the early books. Connelly can be quite wordy at times especially in the earlier works but gets much better later on. Each book is stand alone but some of them make a lot more sense when you read them in order, especially when...well I guess I leave out spoilers here. There are usually quite a few twists in the book and Connelly has got me by surprise more than once while reading these. I averaged about a book and a half a week during this binge.

If you watch the series it won't spoil the books. Rather than have a season devoted to a specific book the series pulls bits and pieces from more than a couple of different books from the series and the first two seasons have changed several endings as well as relationships. So you can watch and not be worried that its going to spoil a book for you.

I figured I would just copy in the current book covers and put them in the correct order for you if you decided to take on this series. Michael Connelly likes to bring characters in from some of his other series, especially from the Lincoln Lawyer series (the main character in this series is Harry's half brother). I have only listed books where Harry is the primary or one of the primary characters. I have left out those books where he only makes a brief appearance. A couple of these books are actually written from another character's point of view which through me off a couple of times thinking that I had picked up the wrong book.

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This book will be released in November of 2016