‘Two Kinds of Truth’ by Michael Connelly

Published 31 October 2017.
(US) by Little, Brown and Company.
ISBN: 978-0-316-22590-8.
(UK) Orion.
ISBN: 978-1409145554 (HB)

After more than three decades, Harry Bosch finally gets to experience something new in this latest novel in this excellent series.  Harry is now working part time at the San Fernando Police Department, solving cold cases, having retired from the LAPD.  And the experiences are somewhat unusual.  To begin with, Harry faces an accusation he planted evidence in the conviction of a rape-murderer.  And to add to the pressure, he volunteers to go undercover after a double murder of two local pharmacists in a drug case.

The case for evidence planting comes about when the felon (serving time on San Quentin’s death row) and his attorney file “new” evidence with a review board “proving” the culprit was another person.  The undercover assignment has Harry posing as an addict in a criminal enterprise that is so massive it uses planes to transport derelict users from location to location to obtain pills from compliant local pharmacies.  Unfortunately, a young man in San Fernando wouldn’t play ball, and he and his father were shot as a result.

The plot involving Harry’s reputation gives Mr. Connelly the opportunity to bring in Harry’s half-brother, the Lincoln Lawyer, to provide some light but significant relief from an otherwise deep and heavy story.  On the whole, another positive addition to an outstanding series and one which is highly recommended.

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Reviewer: Theodore Feit

Michael Connelly  was born in Philadelphia, PA on July 21, 1956. He moved to Florida with his family when he was 12 years old. Michael decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing — a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews. After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat.  In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written. After three years on the crime beat in L.A., Connelly began writing his first novel to feature LAPD Detective Hieronymus Bosch. The novel, The Black Echo based in part on a true crime that had occurred in Los Angeles, was published in 1992 and won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America.  Fifty million copies of Connelly’s books have sold worldwide and he has been translated into thirty-nine foreign languages. Michael lives with his family in Florida.

http://www.michaelconnelly.com/

Ted and Gloria Feit live in Long Beach, NY, a few miles outside New York City.  For 26 years, Gloria was the manager of a medium-sized litigation firm in lower Manhattan. Her husband, Ted, is an attorney and former stock analyst, publicist and writer/editor for, over the years, several daily, weekly and monthly publications.  Having always been avid mystery readers, and since they're now retired, they're able to indulge that passion.  Their reviews appear online as well as in three print publications in the UK and US.  On a more personal note: both having been widowed, Gloria and Ted have five children and nine grandchildren between them.