Customer Reviews

Lost Light

5 star:		(69)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

You can quit the force, but can you get it out of your blood? Clearly not based on this excellent novel about a retired Harry Bosch seeking justice for a murdered woman. But can you at least get away from the police politics? Maybe so. Maybe not.

Why can't Harry leave a cold case alone? The dead woman's hands were "directed upward from her head, as if she were reaching out to someone, almost beseechingly, begging for something. They looked like the hands from a Renaissance painting, like the hands of the damned reaching heavenward for forgiveness. In my life I have worked almost a thousand homicides and no positioning of a fallen body ever gave me such pause."

The advantage of being retired is that you have plenty of time to work on one cold case. The disadvantage is that no one has to help you. Harry Bosch always finds a way, driven by the cruel memory of the dead Angella Benton.

One thing connects to another, and soon Harry is seeing that appearances may be deceiving . . . and intended to fool the casual observer. Then Harry steps his foot into something very delicate, the heavy feet come down on him. Harry doesn't like it, and he's more determined than ever to get to the bottom of the murder.

Opportunity, motive, and alibi all turn out to be important to solving the crime.

But Harry also notices some things that don't add up . . . but doesn't draw the right conclusions until the end of the book where you and he are in for a big surprise.

This is one of the better Harry Bosch stories, and it marks new ground for the series.

This book is told entirely in the first person, through Harry's eyes and mouth. For that reason, it takes on a very personal aspect that some of the other Bosch books don't have. Harry's personal foibles, his mistakes and his lost love make him a bit easier to relate to. He's fallible, but he doesn't fail. He's outside the loop now, but he still solves the mystery. Moreso than usual, Connelly grabs you by the collar and won't let you go until the end. This is the kind of book you want while you're waiting to serve jury duty or get on a delayed airplane flight. Diximus.

Let's start with the obvious to anyone who's read a book in the Harry Bosch series. Lost Light is a very well written mystery, the main character is one of the best developed and multi-dimensional to be featured in a mystery series, and the plot is complex and keeps you guessing. However, on a comparative basis, Lost Light is more slow paced and less action-packed and suspenseful. Perhaps Bosch's now being a private eye versus a cop has made it seem to me that he doesn't have the same toughness and "edge" that made him such a memorable character in earlier books in the series. It will be interesting to see what direction Connelly takes Bosch in upcoming books. If you read this book you'll see that Connelly has created several options for Bosch. I'll be anxious to travel along with Bosch (and some other characters Connelly has featured in other books) in his next adventure, The Narrows, which will be released soon.

He's giving a review of Connelly's own "Angels Flight" that dealt with a black lawyers execution on the LA train of the titles name. That book is a sort of musing of what it would have been like if someone killed Jonny Cochrane right before the OJ trial.

"Lost Light" deals with Bosch (now a private investigator) going over an old case. The case involves a armored truck (that contained $2 million bucks) heist at a movie set. In my opinion this is one of Connelly's better 'Bosch' novels. As usual, it brings in old characters and intoduces new ones. You really get a like-or-loathe feeling for the characters in this one.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to start into the murder-mystery genre. It twists and turns enough to keep you interested, but it doesn't lose you. It also shows the love for California that Connelly is able to get across in all of his 'Bosch' novels.

A good read!

'Lost Light' is only my second Harry Bosch novel but it did involve me enough to think about going back and reading the earlier books in the series. Here Harry, now retired and a PI, investigates an old case, a $ 2 million theft from a movie set and the murder of a young woman who worked at the company producing the movie.

Maybe I've been spoilt by all the James Patterson and Jeffrey Deaver books I've read but this novel seemed rather straightforward. There were no real shockers or twists and the novel traversed a straight path as Harry unravelled the plot. On the other hand, the novel was quite complicated and tight on plot and Harry as a character was interesting and human. It helped that he found himself in trouble with the FBI since his travails humanized him more (and the way he gets out of it was delightful). There were a few too many coincidences but it was admirable the way Connelly brought it all together at the end. The ending was hugely satisfying but would be even more so for regular readers, I would guess.

When retired LAPD cop, Harry Bosch, finds himself drinking too much and generally losing a handle on things, he applies for and receives a private investigators license. He reviews old cases and is drawn to one which he worked on for a brief time, 4 years previously. A temperamental and autocratic movie producer had insisted on using real money for close ups on a movie and the studio provided 2 million dollars. An armed robbery took place in which one of the police was shot and made a paraplegic, but the case was never solved. One of the studio workers, Angella Benton, was murdered in the lobby of her own apartment building and as this case was never solved, Harry begins to try to connect the two. It's an involved solution which takes a lot of concentration to follow and perhaps readers of the Harry Bosch series who are familiar with his friends and workmates will find it a more interesting read than someone who comes to this book cold.

Michael Connelly's "Lost Light" is a taut, well-crafted mystery novel about a retired Los Angeles detective Harry Bosch who decides to use his twenty-five year experience to the aid of a cold case of robbery, shooting, and murder.

This Bosch story is written in the first-person singular, occasionally shifting into third-person; this idiomatic style makes the sifting through the characters and action difficult -- and often obtuse. It was a real struggle to overcome this obstacle, as one really wants this book to be a page turner, but the style prevents it.

This is my first, but by no means my last, Bosch-series novel. Fortunately, most of the other novels are written in the third-person, and if they are as good as this one, they'll be pleasures, rather than challenges, to read.

Lost Light feels a bit weird as you're reading it- it's strange that Harry Bosch is NOT a cop any longer. No authority to investigate, no badge to impress the people he's trying to gather data from, and the FBI breathing down his neck!

This book features Bosch looking into a case he started 4 years ago, but never solved. With one woman murdered, 2 million dollars stolen, 2 policemen who were shot- one dead and one left paralyzed and one missing FBI agent...there's a lot of work ahead! But, do all of these things tie in together, or are they just coincidence? And most importantly, who's responsible?

I enjoyed most of this book. I do agree with one reviewer in that it was a little hard to get into at first, I can't pin point why, it just was. Once you get into the story & the players, you're propelled along at a very quick pace. This is a great mystery, it will have you reading late into the night to figure out what happens next. However, I do have to say that the ending was not as clean as I think it could have been. I felt the conclusions were just a little shaky. It was a pretty good surprise towards the end though, so that makes this reading very worthwhile. Also, a few characters from other Bosch novels pop up, which is always cool, including his ex-wife!

I picked this book up in the airport for a quick read while in flight. What a mistake -- what I thought was a speed read has developed into a full blown habit where I am quickly acquiring all the Harry Bosch novels and am detemined to read them in sequence.

Admittedly, I read 'Lost Light' first when I should have read it last and now I know the bottom line regarding Bosch's personal life and the significance of the 'Lost Light' from a long range perspective. Maybe a good thing . . .

In 'Lost Light', Bosch comes across as an angry outsider who has something to prove and doesn't give up when he thinks he is right. No longer with the police department, he goes solo, investigating a cold case that he had been assigned to years before and then pulled off of when the murder became associated with a high profile robbery. Something about the case sticks in Harry's mind and even a Bosch novice like myself recognizes the bulldog tenacity at work that is surely a Bosch trademark. As Bosch comes closer to an answer, he is warned off by the usual-suspect bureaucrats who unlike Harry are unwilling to jeopardize their positions for the truth. As Harry dodges bullets and mudslings designed to ruin his reputation once and for all, he finds solace in places that he thought were as cold as the murder itself. The pieces fall into place almost haphazardly, the way they probably do in real police situations and Harry stumbles onto one too unexpected truths that rekindle that lost light in his own soul.

Definitely recommended to all readers of Michael Connelly, but also to those who enjoy a fast paced novel set to jazz rhythms, shadowed by the darkness of the world of crime and its players and yet, over time also has the ability to completely and competantly explore a complex character who struggles with emotional holes to fill yet continues to perservere. Although the novel has the strength of a stand alone, I recommend reading the books in order, to keep the names, places and Bosch history in proper perspective.

Love the book. I read all the reviews but is it my imagination or does he make a refrence to Robert Crais private dick Elvis Cole (page 237 in the paperback)