I read Connelly's latest over the weekend, and while I liked
it, I wasn't knocked out by it, the way the previous Bosch
book, _Lost Light_, did. _The Narrows_ seems to bring
together just about every character Connelly has ever created
(was I correct in thinking that the "Jane" character that
Harry was talking to from his motel balcony was the lead from
_Void Moon_?), when Robert Backus, aka "The Poet," comes back
on the scene once more. The narrative switches, sometimes a
bit awkwardly, from the first person perspective of Harry
Bosch, to the third person perspectives of both Backus and
Rachel Walling, his prot駩 in the FBI profilers' unit, and
lead detective in the earlier Poet case, brought in from
exile in the Dakotas to lend her expertise. There's a lot
going on in this book and it moves very quickly. One odd bit
of business I noticed that started to wear on my nerves was
that very little of the dialogue used contractions--there
were a lot of rather awkward, formal constructions that
really didn't sound like realistic speech. I noticed this a
while back with Patricia Cornwell, about the time her books
stopped being very good, so I hope we're not in for a similar
decline from Connelly. If you like Harry Bosch, you'll like
this book, though it was almost too busy a novel to really
add much in the way of character growth and development,
things that did a lot to make _Lost Light_ so memorable. The
emphasis here is on plot, plot, and more plot.
Craig Larson Trinidad, CO
******SPOILER********
And it doesn't look like Bosch will be a private eye much
longer.
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