los angeles

I have been reading the Harry Bosch series for 20 years and I have enjoyed every book. His first books in the series were called Black Echo and then Black Ice.  They are well written police procedurals/thrillers/mysteries. The main character is Harry Bosch, a Vietnam War vet who spends as much time battling police bureaucracies as he does criminals. The novels are set in L.A. and Southern California. There is a level of complexity and detail that is enjoyable, but mainly Connelly is a good storyteller. His latest novel, The Black Box, continues the series and is another fun read!

12.21 is Dustin Thomason’s second book after his well received debut novel Rule of Four that he co-wrote with his friend Ian Caldwell. 12.21 is a quite timely thriller as the premise is based on a 2012 apocalypse phenomenon. The main male character is a doctor specializing in incurable prion diseases and who has just been notified about an unusual prion case at an L.A. Hospital. The main female character is a Guatemalan American museum researcher focusing on Mayan studies and who has recently acquired unknown and invaluable ancient Mayan codex that was smuggled into the USA. They meet when she

There is a new player in town! Hardboiled has a great new addition in P.G. Sturges. This is the debut novel of the son of the director, Preston Sturges.  The Shortcut Man is an entertaining ride into the sleazy side of L.A. by an ex-cop turned private eye, Dick Henry, who gets involved with a porn king and his treacherous wife, and it is a rollercoaster of a ride.  Sturges’ writing and plotting are squarely in the best standards of the hardboiled genre.  He already has a second novel out entitled Tribulations of the Shortcut Man.

In the 15th book in Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series, Connelly returns to familiar ground, leaving behind Nine Dragons' Hong Kong setting, returning to Los Angeles and reuniting readers with Bosch’s original nemesis, Irvin Irving.  Irving first appeared in the original Bosch novel, 1992’s The Black Echo.  In The Drop, Bosch is three years from forced retirement from the LAPD.  Bosch and new partner David Chu are given a cold case, a 1989 rape where DNA evidence has pulled up a 29-year-old suspect.  Before they can complete their work, Bosch and Chu are pulled away to a death scene, where