Black Box (Connelly)

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Black Box (English: The Black Box) is the 25th novel by the American crime novelist Michael Connelly , the 16th novel in the Harry Bosch series. It was published in 2012, with a German translation in 2014. In 2012 the novel received the Premio RBA de Novela Policiaca, a highly endowed award from the Spanish multimedia publisher RBA.

action

On March 5, 1991, Bosch and his colleagues saw the video of the police violence against Rodney King for the first time . From the end of April 1992 riots broke out in Los Angeles when the police officers who brutally beat King were all acquitted. There are so many murders going on in South Central that detectives from other departments have been pulled together to help. On the night of May 1, 1992, Bosch and Edgar were called to a female corpse that had been found in an alley off Crenshaw Boulevard. It was Anneke Jesperson, a Danish photojournalist. Bosch secures a shell from the corpse, but the murder is not solved.

20 years later, Bosch is taking up the case again in the Open Unsolved Unit. The bullet casing he found in 1992 has traces like other casings found in two other murders. Bosch manages to find the weapon. The serial number had been filed out, but “Pistol Pete” in the LAPD's weapons laboratory can almost completely reconstruct it. To speed up the search for the gun owner, Bosch contacts Rachel Walling of the FBI. At the same time he learns that Anneke Jesperson had researched war crimes at Desert Strom .

In the Open-Unsolved Unit, Lt. O'Toole Bosch's new manager, a bureaucrat. O'Toole reports Bosch to the Internal Investigations Department, now called PSB, Professional Standards Bureau, of a minor matter. Detective Nancy Mendenhall begins investigating Bosch's behavior.

Through a colleague of Rachel Walling, Suzanne Wingo, Bosch learns the origin of the murder weapon. It was one of weapons sold to the Iraqi Republican Guard prior to 1992. After Desert Storm, these guns were supposed to have been destroyed, but somehow some of them ended up in Los Angeles. And a troop of soldiers who had been at war in Iraq were used in the riots in Los Angeles, precisely where Anneke Jesperson was murdered.

Bosch suspects that soldiers smuggled the weapon into the United States after Operation Desert Storm. Jesperson had been to Iraq as a journalist, and Bosch finds out she was drugged and raped by four men on a recovery ship, the Saudi Princess: Francis Dowler, Carl Cosgrove Jr., Reggie Banks, and Chris Henderson. A JJ Drummond helped them cover up the crime. Jesperson had tracked the men to California and then LA, where they were deployed during the 1992 riots. That is why Jesperson was killed. Bosch doesn't know which of the men was the murderer, but he wants to find out. Since O'Toole would not allow him to go to Stanislaus County , where Bosch had located the men, he is taking leave to continue the investigation.

Bosch drives to the Central Valley to find the four men. He observes the Cosgrove estate, arrests Banks, and forces him to confess. Drummond, the Stanislaus County sheriff, follows Bosch and overpowers him. He takes Bosch and Banks to Cosgrove's barn, where he ties Bosch to a post and kills Banks in cold blood. Mendenhall has followed Bosch because she suspects he is investigating his vacation and she can help him get out of the barn. In Cosgrove's house, they find the bodies of Dowler and Cosgrove; they were killed by Drummond who intended to blame Bosch for the murders. When Drummond tries to escape by helicopter, he crashes into a wind turbine and is seriously injured. He murdered Anneke Jesperson in 1992.

Cross references

In Chapter 14, Bosch walks past the grave of Arthur Delacroix, the murdered boy from No Angel So Pure .

background

The title of the novel Black Box refers to the simplest example of classic police work, which Connelly combines with modern forensic methods in this novel: the handwritten notes of the street policeman, which were made on the street and noted on small index cards. These Field Interview Cards were kept in small black boxes, the black boxes .

reception

Kirkus Review finds that the novel, while superior to many other detective novels, is not an outstanding example in the series of Connelly's books. Publishers Weekly, on the other hand, finds the novel excellent and praises Connelly's thorough knowledge of police work, his ability to create a complex plot, and his increasingly deep characterization of the main character. Paula Woods emphasizes in her review in the Los Angeles Times that Connelly has always understood how to combine an exciting plot with details of the police investigation, in this novel in particular through the combination of means from the 1990s, such as the so-called Shake Cards , brief notes on contacts in the investigation, with the modern forensic techniques for examining firearms. Paula Woods is a detective novel herself, including her book Inner City Blues , set during the 1992 Los Angeles riot. The New York Times notes the anniversary: Black Box was released 20 years after Connelly's debut Black Echo (German Black Echo ). Of the total of 25 novels that Connelly wrote during this time, some were written “a little hastily”, but not this novel: “… is an outstanding one thanks to a well-thought-out plot in which all parts of the story come together to form a puzzle Example “in the series of novels with the main character Harry Bosch. In the Washington Post, Patrick Anderson uses the BlackBox as an opportunity to honor the entire series of Bosch novels: “I decided a few years ago that this was the best crime series written by an American, and nothing in the new book changes my mind. "

Sylvia Staude points out in the Frankfurter Rundschau that Connelly not only takes up the riots of 1992 in the novel, but also current events: “An unexpected twist in 'Black Box' leads to a topic that is topical with every new war: violence against Civilians. The journalist (who died in the murder that Bosch wants to solve) had researched crimes in the Gulf War, had a small group of veterans in her sights, and may have been killed to cover up another crime. "The reviewer of the Krimicouch concludes: “There were good, better, and outstanding episodes in this series. The reviewer cannot remember one slip to the bottom. (The reviewer does not share the opinion of his colleague Marcel Feige on The Adversary .) But especially in the last two volumes (The Adversary and Black Box) a routine has emerged. "

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marilyn Stasio Dark Passage in: New York Times, December 7, 2012
  2. ↑ Kirkus Review: The Black Box by Michael Connelly
  3. ↑ Publishers Weekly: The Black Box by Michael Connelly
  4. ↑ Paula Woods Michael Connelly's 'The Black Box' harks to '92 LA riots in: LA Times, November 30, 2012
  5. ↑ Janet Maslin A Cold Case That Warms a Cop's Heart in: New York Times, November 21, 2012
  6. ↑ Patrick Anderson Book review: Michael Connelly's 'The Black Box' in: Washington Post, November 25, 2012
  7. ^ Sylvia Staude An old story in: FR, June 20, 2014
  8. ↑ Jürgen Priester: Harry Bosch is getting on in the years of crime thriller couch.de, November 2013