THE DROP

THE DROP by Michael Connelly

From the book jacket::

Harry Bosch is facing the end of the line.  He's been put on the DROP - the Deferred Retirement Option Plan - and given three years before he must retire from the LAPD.  Seeing the end of the mission coming, Bosch wants cases more fiercely than ever, and in one morning he gets two.

First, DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches that of a twenty-nine-year-old convicted rapist.  Was he involved in the crime when he was only eight, or has something gone terribly wrong in the new Regional Crime Lab?  The latter possibility could compromise all of the lab's DNA cases currently in court.

Then Bosch and his partner are called by the chief of police himself to a death scene fraught with internal politics.  The son of Councilman Irvin Irving jumped or was dropped from a window at the glamorous Chateau Marmont.  Irving, Harry's longtime nemesis, now demands that no one but Bosch handle the investigation.

Relentlessly pursuing both cases, which are interwoven like the double helix of a DNA strand, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries:  a sadistic killer operating unknown in the city for more than two decades, and a political conspire dark history of the police department.

This was a re-read of the next-to-last Harry Bosch book so far in the series. I loved the book when I read it last year, and I still do.  Harry is fantastic.  Now that I've read the earlier books in the series, I understand him a lot better and can follow his thinking more.  And I have the backstories on his daughter and his involvement with Councilman Irving.

Only one more book in the series, THE BLACK BOX.  I just read that Mr. Connelly had started another Harry book, but had to put it aside for now.  It was going to be about school shootings, and he felt this wasn't the time to write that book, considering the recent tragedy in Connecticut.  So it looks like I'm going to have to wait awhile for more Harry after I finish THE BLACK BOX.