City of Bones is the eighth book in author Michael Connelly’s series about Los Angeles Police Detective Harry Bosch. It’s one of the best, in my opinion. The book stands nicely on its own, really. There’s not much background that you would need from previous books in the series to grasp what’s going on here.

When a retired doctor walks his dog and discovers a human bone, Harry catches the case. All that’s left are bones in a shallow grave from many years before. These types of cases often go unsolved, but Bosch is determined to bring the killer of this child to justice. The first step is identifying the bones, which is something they struggle with until there’s a phone call. from a woman who thinks the bones might belong to her brother, who disappeared twenty years before. Since the bones show signs of repeated abuse as a child, Harry believes the killer is a family member.

The bones don’t tell the whole story, though, and it’s up to Harry and his partner, Jerry Edgar, to try to piece together what happened to him all those years ago. As they interview people who lived in the neighborhood and family members of the deceased, they put together a troubling picture. Is it the correct one, though?

Harry Bosch is the kind of detective who has trouble letting things go. That’s both good and bad. The good is that it gives him the tenacity to pursue a case when other people want to write it off. The bad is that it means sometimes he does so against the wishes of his superiors. Harry knows he’s being looked at for a transfer, with the potential to force him into retirement. Still, he is making mistakes that will cause his superiors to think about it harder. He enters into a relationship with an older rookie. There are early signs that this is a bad idea, but Harry ignores them.

No one has ever said Bosch is perfect, and here it’s obvious he makes some huge mistakes. Some of that is having faith in the wrong people, which brings into question Harry’s ability to be a judge of character. Is he just thinking with one part of his anatomy? It would seem so in the case of Julia Brasher. It’s a bit of a distraction to the central case, but it also shows that Bosch is human and can make mistakes.

Connelly writes a compelling mystery here. There’s a suspect who seems to be just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or is he? Connelly also makes a point about trying people in the court of public opinion before people have all the facts. How many times, when someone is arrested for a heinous crime, do people immediately judge them to be guilty and want to punish without due process? Just go through any comment section on a news story, and you’ll see it. The obvious solution might give law enforcement credit for closing the case, but it might not be the truth. Real justice is a search for the truth, not just a statistic. Bosch is a firm believer in that and hates the media for the problems it causes.

This was an easy book to listen to in audio format. Narrator Peter J. Fernandez does a terrific job with the story, giving clear narration without becoming the characters. I like this better than narrators who try to act out the story. He reads with proper inflections and emotion, while at the same time not adding to the story with his own interpretation of events.

This is a solid police procedural that also addresses the politics of the job and the negative effect the media can have on a case. Sometimes, it’s scaring off a suspect. Other times, it’s trying to solve the case before all of the information is available. Speculation kills in City of Bones. I think this is one of the best books in the Harry Bosch series.

Previous book in the series: