Book Report: The Black Ice

13. Michael Connelly, The Black Ice (1993) (7/12/19)

My second in the Harry Bosch series of books, which (the series, that is) I started back in May. This one, like the first, I had read before, but I didn't remember it. (My mind-like-a-sieve isn't all bad when it comes to rereading mysteries.)

This one had some murders, to be sure—starting, actually, with a "suicide," of a fellow police officer . . . but really, suicide? Bosch has his doubts.

In the end, the mystery isn't so much a who-dunnit as a multi-part puzzle to be solved, one involving, centrally, drugs—the eponymous "black ice" is a form of heroin—and one that could have gone in many directions. And in the solving of it, again, you get a sense of Bosch's intelligence and stubbornness and willfulness—the last two perhaps poor qualities for an LAPD officer. Well, certainly the last one.

But Bosch is nothing if not thorough. And he means to figure things out. To find the truth.

Which he does in the end, on a trip that takes him from Hollywood to Mexicali/Calexico—the dark border area.

I marked one paragraph for its clear language. It takes place as a raid of a drug lord's hacienda is being carried out.

Bosch noticed how the voices on the radio were higher and more urgent. The code words and formal language had been stripped away. Fear did that. He had seen it in the war. He'd seen it on the streets when he was in uniform. Fear, though always unspoken, nevertheless stripped men of their carefully orchestrated poses. The adrenaline roars and the throat gurgles with fear like a backed-up drain. Sheer desire for survival takes over. It sharpens the mind, pares away all the bullshit. A once-modulated reference to Point B becomes the almost hysterical expletive. 

It was a good read, though unfortunately it was rather fragmented by travel. (I also partly blame the large-print format that I ordered by mistake. That's probably ridiculous, but somehow, having so few, or do I mean such big?, words on a page felt like I couldn't comprehend as well.) I could probably sit down and reread the book again and still be surprised. Mind like a sieve!