I gave this a go. I really did. I stopped and started it twice. Then I ignored for a bunch of weeks, forgot what was going on, and was going to toss it. But I said to myself, "Self, maybe you were in the wrong headspace. Start again, give it another go."

This advice, unfortunately, did not work.

From what I read, the book is about driving. Mostly driving around a bunch of streets in California I don't know, so they mean absolutely nothing to me. He takes the Expressway to Pontiff Avenue, hangs a left on Cardinal road to beat the yuppies and their fancy coffees, gets on to another Freeway, exists onto another street that could be a cul-de-sac or giant freeway, and then parks in front of the police station because it's close to shift change and there'll be lots of traffic in the parking lot. Yes, in the parking lot.

Repeat this scenario every time the MC leaves a building to go to another building. He needs to do this every 7-10 pages. Basically, the places he needs to go are far apart, traffic sucks and there's lots of roads.

Oh, and he sold the rights to his cases to a TV studio. If you've seen the show Bosch, this is that Detective Bosch. Does he drive around a lot in the show? Is it just endless scenes of traffic and roads? I have no idea, and I don’t think I’ll be watching it now.

The book is also about a murder, some stolen jewelry, and Detective Bosch presumably trying to put all the pieces together as he drives around figuring things out.

Bosch was a Vietnam vet, came back and became an police officer. The flashback scenes to Vietnam are actually quite good. Anyway, once back, he worked his way up to detective of a prestigious division, then got demoted to a whole different precinct because he went off the book. He chainsmokes, drinks too much coffee, can't get the FBI to drop the red tape and work with him, and has Internal Affairs breathing down his neck. Because of course he does. They seem to want to bring him down, because of course they do. I suspect they're actually investigating how much gas money he's costing the department.

I’m sorry I don’t know how this turns out. Maybe if you’re into procedurals (or driving) you’ll like it more than I did.

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Created Feb 29, 2024 at 7:00pm • Submit your own review...