Book Report: The Last Coyote

13. Michael Connelly, The Last Coyote (1995) (3/9/21)

I finished the third Harry Bosch novel at the end of December 2019. A year-plus later, it feels like little has changed with our weary detective—now on administrative leave because he threw his lieutenant through a window. So he needs to find something to do with his time. What better than to investigate, on his lonesome, a thirty-year-old cold case—that happens to concern the murder of his prostitute mother?

It's got all the Harry Bosch earmarks: he's tough, he's dogged, he doesn't follow the rules; he's got his hunches, and they turn out to be . . . maybe somewhat right. He gets beat up; a few people, mostly bad guys, get killed. He travels to Florida to follow a lead and, incidentally, falls in love. In this book, which is set just after the Northridge earthquake, his house is red-tagged and eventually torn down, so he's a little bit homeless too.

Although Bosch started nosing after a particular former DA early on, and that DA's right-hand man (who lives in an amazing spaceship house overlooking the L.A. basin), we of course know that they couldn't have done the murder . . . though they might have done other bad things. Bosch was too suspicious of them for them to be the actual killers.

In the end, I wasn't convinced of the motivations of the person who turned out (in the last 40 pages) to be the murderer. 

But the case got tied up, and what else do you want from a mystery/police procedural? 

When I'm editing books, I often turn to schlock. I think Connelly is a pretty good writer—though this time, while on the editing front I was battling an especially awkward translation of short stories from Arabic, I couldn't help but notice how . . . straightforward? uninflected? Hemingwayesque? Connelly's writing is. Not that that's bad. I just kept noticing.

But still: I read, and enjoy, Connelly (this was a re-read, though I'd forgotten everything about it) because I like that bastard Bosch. He's complicated in all the best ways. And Connelly is good at coming up with interesting storylines and evoking place beautifully. What more is there when all you need is a bit of diversion?