A Harry Bosch Novel (abridged)

The man most hated by the LAPD - a black lawyer who has made his name by bringing lawsuits alleging racism and brutality by police officers - has been found murdered on the eve of a high-profile trial. The list of suspects includes half the police force. And Harry Bosch is the detective chosen to head the investigation. The political dangers of the case are huge. If it's not investigated fairly, the public outcry could make the Rodney King riots look tame. But a full investigation will take Bosch into the ugliest corners of law enforcement.

A movie director is charged with murdering an actress during sex, and then staging her death to make it look like a suicide. In a seemingly unrelated case, a loner is murdered, leaving the sheriff's department with no clues. One unsettling revelation after another leaves a retired FBI agent and an L.A. detective thinking they've unmasked a most frightening killer with almost inconceivable calculation. Also available uabridged.

On New Year's Day, a dog finds a bone in the Hollywood Hills - and unearths a murder committed more than 20 years earlier. It's a cold case, but for Detective Harry Bosch, it stirs up memories of his childhood as an orphan. He can't let it go. As the investigation takes Bosch deeper into the past, a beautiful rookie cop brings him alive in the present. No official warning can break them apart - or prepare Bosch for the explosions when the case takes a few hard turns. Suddenly all of L.A. is in an uproar.

When he left the LAPD Bosch took a file with him, the case of a film production assistant murdered four years earlier during a $2 million robbery on a movie set. The LAPD, now operating under post-9/11 rules, think the stolen money was used to finance a terrorist training camp. Thoughts of the original murder victim are lost in the federal zeal, and when it seems the killer will be set free to aid the feds' terrorist hunt, Bosch quickly runs foul of both his old colleagues and the FBI.

Harry Bosch is adjusting to life in Las Vegas as a private investigator and a new father. He gets a call, too, from the widow of a friend who died recently. Previously in his FBI career, the friend worked on the famous case tracking the killer known as The Poet. That fact makes some of the elements of his death doubly suspicious.

After three years as a PI, Harry Bosch returns to the LAPD, working with his former cop ally and partner, Kizmin Rider. It was Kiz who helped to persuade him back into the blue religion. Harry and Kiz are assigned to the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit. These detectives are the Closers; they put a shovel in the dirt and turn over the past.

When a physicist is murdered in Los Angeles it seems the killer has no fear of publicity, leaving the body on The Overlook, a site with a stunning view over the city. And when it's discovered that the victim turned over a quantity of a lethal chemicals to his killer before he died, Harry Bosch knows he has more than just a single death to worry about.

The shooting of a Chinese liquor store owner in LA brings Harry Bosch back to the Rodney King riots and the moment a stranger gave a young cop sanctuary. Now the debt must be repaid, and Harry soon discovers the old man's death was no ordinary holdup.

Harry Bosch is facing the end of the line. He's been put on the DROP - Deferred Retirement Option Plan - and given three years before his retirement is enforced. Seeing the end of the mission coming, he's anxious for cases. He doesn't have to wait long. First a cold case gets a DNA hit for a rape and murder which points the finger at a 29-year-old convicted rapist who was only eight at the time of the murder. Then a city councilman's son is found dead - fallen or pushed from a hotel window - and he insists on Bosch taking the case despite the two men's history of enmity.

May 1992, and after four LAPD officers were acquitted after the savage beating of Rodney King, Los Angeles is ablaze. As looting and burning take over the city, law and order are swept away in a tidal wave of violence. But under threat of their lives, homicide detectives like Harry Bosch are still stubbornly trying to do their job. With no effective police presence on the streets, murder just got a whole lot easier - and investigating them got a whole lot harder.