Book Report: The Concrete Blonde

28. Michael Connelly, The Concrete Blonde (1994) (12/27/19)

Book three of the 23 books in the Harry Bosch series, done! I had read this one before, but I didn't remember the resolution, or really much of the plot—again, yay for a mind-like-a-sieve—which meant I could enjoy it all over again.

The story starts with a prologue in which Bosch shoots a man whom he believes to be the "Dollmaker," a serial killer of eleven women—so called because he garishly decorated his victims' faces with their own makeup, much of which is found in the man's bathroom. Seemingly clinching the case.

Chapter one, and the action of the book, begins four year later, as Bosch faces a civil trial, charged with wrongful death by the Dollmaker's widow. Bosch allegedly "cowboyed," neglecting to follow established LAPD procedure.

On the first day of the trial, a new body comes to light featuring the same MO as the serial killer's. Along with a note addressed personally to Bosch, as occurred in two of the earlier murders. How could that be? Did Harry make a mistake?

The story has the trial going on by day—with a prosecuting attorney who's sharp as a whip, the defending attorney less so—while Bosch, who apparently needs little sleep, ferrets out clues in his off hours. Eventually, with the assistance of a vice squad detective and a psychologist, he determines that there's a copycat, focused specifically on women in "porno" (sex videos)—and has been since even before the Dollmaker was killed. (I don't think that's too much of a spoiler. Of course Harry got the right guy at the start.)

I won't say any more, except that there's an awful lot of running after hunches (and suspects) in this story, on very little (if any) real evidence. But eventually Harry runs after the right hunch, and actual evidence even comes to light. And justice is served.

Connelly is a good writer—solid in what he does, which is police procedural (with a rogue element: Bosch), but also adept at evoking a particular place: L.A. I flagged a couple of passages that play to the latter strength. Here's one, the reference to riots having to do with the Rodney King incident of 1991:

Los Angeles had changed in the last few years, but then there was nothing new about that. It was always changing and that was why he loved it. But riot and recession had left a particularly harsh mark on the landscape, the landscape of memory. Bosch believed he would never forget the pall of smoke that hung over the city like some kind of supersmog that could not be lifted by the evening winds. The TV pictures of burning buildings and looters unchecked by the police. It had been the department's darkest hour and it still had not recovered.
 And neither had the city. Many of the ills that led to such volcanic rage were still left untended. The city offered so much beauty and yet it offered so much danger and hate. It was a city of shaken confidence, living solely on its stores of hope. In Bosch's mind he saw the polarization of the haves and have-nots as a scene in which a ferry was leaving the dock. An overloaded ferry leaving an overloaded dock, with some people with a foot on the boat and a foot on the dock. The boat was pulling further away and it would only be so long before those in the middle would fall in. Meanwhile, the ferry was still too crowded and it would capsize at the first wave. Those left on the dock would certainly cheer this. They prayed for the wave. 

The title of this book refers both to the new body that sets Bosch on the hunt for the copycat killer (she is buried under a slab of concrete) and to Lady Justice, who stands, in statue form, in front of the courthouse where Bosch's trial is taking place, and which he goes to stand near on his frequent cigarette breaks. She's made of concrete, and one of the characters imagines her as a blonde. And yes, this book is about justice. In so many ways.

Next up: The Last Coyote.