Cold death

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Cold Death (English: The Overlook) is the 18th novel by the American crime thriller Michael Connelly , the 13th novel in the Harry Bosch series. It was published in 2007 and in German, translated by Sepp Leeb in 2008.

action

Harry Bosch is on standby in his new position at the central homicide department of Los Angeles, the Homicide Special department, as his boss calls him: a murder at the lookout above the Mulholland Dam. Bosch notifies his new partner, Ignacio Ferras - more than 20 years younger than Harry Bosch - and immediately goes to the crime scene.

The victim is quickly identified. It's about 42 year old Stanley Kent. Bosch is surprised that Rachel Walling from the FBI shows up at the crime scene. She was alerted because Stanley Kent had access to radioactive material in the Los Angeles hospitals. A year ago, Walling, along with her partner Stanley Kent and his wife Alicia, warned of a possible terrorist threat. The FBI sees Kent's murder as a national security threat. Bosch and Walling drive to the victim's apartment and find his wife Alicia tied up there. She was forced by two masked men to email her husband with a photo of her handcuffing. The men blackmailed Kent into giving them radioactive cesium. Together with Rachel's partner Jack Brenner, Bosch discovers that all of the cesium in the St. Aggy's clinic is gone. The FBI is extremely alarmed: the radioactive material could be used to build a dirty atomic bomb.

Ferras found a witness. Bosch interrogates him, a Canadian youth named Jesse Mitford. He observed that Kent was killed by a headshot. Bosch does not hand the witness over to the FBI because he fears he will be excluded from the investigation. He wants to keep the witness in hand as a bargaining chip. Indeed, the FBI wants to force Bosch out, they won't let him interrogate Alicia Kent.

But Bosch wants to find the murderer. He continues to investigate. Together with Ferras he drives to the Kents apartment. Cliff Maxwell, an FBI agent, is watching the house and wants to deny Bosch access. Bosch ties Maxwell up, much to Ferras' discomfort. They search the apartment but can't find anything that is obviously important in solving the murder. On the way back, Bosch drives to a donut shop where the police chief likes to stop in the morning. He intercepts him - even more of Ferras' uneasiness - and asks him to see the FBI to ensure that Bosch and his partner remain involved in the investigation.

Alicia Kent's car, in which one of the masked men drove away, was found in front of the home of Ramin Samir, a former visiting professor at USC who had sharply criticized the US government's Middle East policy. Don Hadley, the head of the Homeland Security department at the LAPD, is already on site and wants to storm the house. Bosch cannot convince him that everything indicates that the perpetrators arranged everything to bring Samir under suspicion. Hadley refuses to speak to him and orders the house to be stormed. Ramin Samir is shot dead. No trace of the cesium in the house. Bosch was right.

Bosch wants to see Rachel Walling to get access to Alicia Kent. She tells him it must be a terrorist case, because Alicia Kent remembered one of the masked men calling the other "Moby," the code name of a Syrian terrorist that the FBI knows about he is illegally in Los Angeles. Bosch then tells Walling where he has put his witness.

Shortly thereafter, Bosch received a call from Coroner Joe Felton. He heard of a strange case of acute radioactive contamination of an emergency patient. Bosch drives to the Queens of Angels clinic with Walling. The patient, Digoberto Gonzalves, is not responsive. Bosch finds his car key and drives Walling to Cahuenga Boulevard, where Gonzalves was found. You will find his car and in him the cesium. Bosch realizes that Gonzalves was a "trash recycler" who searched bulky waste. In doing so he found the cesium and took it for himself. Terrorists throwing away the captured radioactive material? Bosch is getting more and more doubts about the FBI's theory. He suspects Alicia Kent of arranging the murder of her husband. But how did she know the name "Moby" - insider knowledge - from? Bosch remembers that the FBI was with the Kents and suspects that Walling's partner, Brenner, had a relationship with Alicia Kent. Walling rejects all suspicions against Brenner, but at the time her partner wasn’t Brenner at all, but Maxwell. Bosch can convince Walling of his theory. They learn that Maxwell went to see Bosch's witness and fear that he will murder him. Bosch notices that Alicia Kent is much more dangerous for Maxwell. But when they get to the FBI office, Maxwell not only shot Alicia Kent, but also shot Ferras, whom Bosch had sent to the building. Bosch and Walling catch Maxwell, who kills himself with a shot in the head. Bosch's summary: sex and money = murder; as a result, five dead, his partner wounded and one dying from radioactive exposure.

background

The historical background of the novel is the tightening of the anti-terror laws in the United States after September 11, 2001 . In the novel, a whole series of institutions get involved in Bosch's case, which are dedicated to the persecution of “terrorists” and who take little account of the rights of those who suspect them.

The witness whom Bosch interrogates in the novel, the Canadian teenager Jesse Mitford, has in his backpack the book Bleak House by Charles Dickens , which was published in 20 installments from March 1852 to September 1853. The character of the detective Inspector Bucket appears in the novel. He is one of the first detective characters in British literature. Connelly's novel also first appeared as a series, namely in The New York Times Sunday Magazine in sixteen episodes that were published from September 17, 2006 to January 21, 2007.

reception

Kirkus Review praises the novel: “A beautifully dismantled case that compensates in tension and speed for what it lacks in depth.” And Publishers Weekly can also recommend it, particularly because of its contemporary relevance: “The scramble over the investigation of threats to national security whether justified or not, is a hot topic that Connelly is giving a brilliant new spin. ”The Los Angeles Times review points out that Connelly maps Los Angeles as a poisoned landscape, both physically and psychologically, and compares the resulting atmosphere with the "hallucinations in the dream landscapes of Edgar Allan Poe ".

The Krimicouch thinks that the "Odyssey of Hieronymus Bosch" also gives pleasure in the 13th book: "It never gets boring with the buck-legged investigator who unexpectedly ends up in new hunting grounds."

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Drewniok: Anyone who calls Wolf too often will be believed! Krimi couch.de, September 2008
  2. ^ Inspector Bucket - Fictional Character in: Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. ↑ Michael Connelly: The Funny Pages - Sunday Serial - The Overlook in: New York Times, September 17, 2006
  4. ↑ Kirkus Review: Overlook by Michael Connelly
  5. ↑ Publishers Weekly: The Overlook by Michael Connelly
  6. ↑ Donna Rifkind: Count on it in: LA Times, May 20, 2007