Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Harry Bosch celebrates his award of $350,000 in damages from the MacLaren Children’s Center, where he spent a troubled childhood, by seeking justice for a friend who was killed there more than half a century ago. Bosch isn’t interested in his payout from the long-delayed settlement, which splits $4 billion among countless young people who were abused or molested for many shameful years. He wants to donate his $350,000 to the real-life charity Hope in a Suitcase in the name of Charles Lamb, whose murder investigation never went anywhere. Even more, he wants to identify Charlie’s killer and make him pay. When his attempts to gather information on gang leader Nikolai Novak, who as Nick Stokely was a violence-prone bully at MacLaren, Novak’s goons swoop down on him, and so does the FBI, which has had Novak under surveillance for reasons Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Cutler won’t share unless Bosch joins a task force and swears to keep its findings confidential. The first demand is an easy call, but avid fans who’ve followed Bosch in Connelly’s many novels or the TV series they’ve spawned will know that the second will never happen. Shut out of the investigation after coloring outside too many lines, Bosch slides effortlessly into a much less cold case, Gregory Talbot’s killing of his estranged wife, Jennifer, a mere 25 years ago. As usual, both investigations turn not on establishing whodunit but on amassing evidence that will hold up in court—and, in Novak’s case, tamping down a national security disaster to boot. The final showdown between Novak and Bosch will make your heart thrum with vigilante pride. The older and wiser Connelly’s storied hero gets, the more like himself he behaves. That’s downright inspiring. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.