Black ice
Schwarzes Eis (English: The Black Ice) is the second novel by the American crime novelist Michael Connelly . It is the second book in the Harry Bosch series, published in 1993, in German in 1996. The novel received the 1995 Maltese Falcon Award .
action
A dead police officer, Calexico Moore, in a shabby motel room in Hollywood - everything looks like suicide. Bosch does not believe in suicide and wants to solve the case, against the stated will of Assistant Chief Irvin Irving.
Bosch is withdrawn from the case, but he finds a connection to a broken case by his colleague Lucius Porter, who has taken a leave of absence from work due to stress. The trail leads to Cal Moore and Mexicali , Mexico. On the American side of the border near Mexicali is Calexico , the city after which Moore got his first name. And that's where the drug called "Black Ice" comes from, which is flooding Los Angeles. Harry Bosch wants to single-handedly convict drug lord Zorillo, known as "The Pope", and his hit man.
Bosch suspects that the so-called “Pope”, drug lord Humberto Zorillo from Mexicali, is a half-brother of Moore and that Moore ran the cartel's business in Los Angeles. Against Irving's wishes, Bosch drives to Calexico , where he visits the vacant building - the "castle" - where Moore grew up as a servant's child. Then he crossed the border to Mexicali , where he found out how the drug "Black Ice" was smuggled into California. It was made at Zorillo's ranch and tunneled to a seemingly normal company that then took it to Los Angeles. The American DEA DEA storms the drug ranch in a raid, Zorillo but can not believe it. Several helicopters were involved in the raid, reminding Bosch, like the smugglers' tunnels, of his time as a tunnel rat in the Vietnam War .
Bosch suspects where the drug lord has fled to. He puts it in the "castle" in Calexico. The fugitive wasn't Zorillo, but Cal Moore. The body mistakenly identified as Moore was actually Zorillo. Moore had killed Zorillo and taken his place in the leadership of the Mexicali drug cartel. He wanted the murder of his half-brother to appear as his own suicide. Moore tries to win Bosch over with a lot of money. When Bosch refuses, he already suspects that Moore is planning to be shot by Bosch. Moore takes up a gun and Bosch shoots him. He leaves the corpse and the money behind.
In Los Angeles, Moore's funeral takes place with a grand ceremony of police celebrities. Assistant Chief Irvin Irving now knows that he was responsible for the wrong identification of the body. He still doesn't stop the funeral. Bosch and Irving both know this, which is why Irving cannot discipline Bosch's solo effort.
background
'Ice' is a very pure form of methamphetamine hydrochloride that, coming from Asia in the late 1980s, quickly found many users in Hawaii. The spread of 'Ice' inspired Michael Connelly to invent a variant of 'Black Ice' from Mexico and to make it the title of the novel 'Black Ice'. In the novel, however, the rivalry between drug cartels from Hawaii and Mexico only plays a minor role. The police milieu is in the foreground and the mirror image of the places Mexicali and Calexico is a kind of leitmotif for the background of the events in the novel.
reception
Kirkus Review emphasizes the inside knowledge of Michael Connelly: "Connelly (who reports on crime in the Los Angeles Times ) shows again his knowledge of the way police officers work - and about the stereotypes of detective stories." In the final verdict, the review compares by Kirkus Review "Black Ice" with the Stuart Haydon series by David L. Lindsey , which is attested to have more thrills. Publishers Weekly states that Connelly has established himself as a “writer with a particularly good storytelling talent” with his second novel.
President Bill Clinton , like Harry Bosch's lover of the saxophone, liked Black Ice so much that he invited Connelly to a brief meeting at LAX International Airport in Los Angeles in 1993 : 'Hey, I just read your book ... I like that Saxophone.'.
expenditure
- Michael Connelly: The Black Ice . Little, Brown and Company , 1993 ISBN 0-316-15382-6
- Michael Connelly: Black Ice . Novel. From the American by Norbert Puszkar. Heyne, Munich, 1996 ISBN 978-3-453-10819-6 , as a paperback Heyne, Munich 2005 ISBN 978-3-453-43180-5
- Michael Connelly: Schwarzes Eis , from the American by Norbert Puszkar and Black Angels , from the American by Sepp Leeb, two Harry Bosch novels in one volume. Heyne, Munich 2005 ISBN 978-3-453-43092-1
- Michael Connelly: Black Ice . Novel. From the American by Norbert Puszkar. Ueberreuter, Vienna, 2007 ISBN 978-3-8000-9274-1
Individual evidence
- ^ Crime Fiction Awards - The Falcon Award
- ↑ Susan Essoyan: Use of Highly Addictive 'Ice' Growing in Hawaii: Drugs: This smokable form of methamphetamine that ravages the minds and bodies of users has spread rapidy because it offers an intense, prolonged high without the use of needles LA Times, 16 October 1989
- ↑ In a post on MichaelConnelly.com Message Board , Michael Connelly wrote according to the English Wikipedia that he invented the drug 'Black Ice'. This post is no longer available on the Internet.
- ↑ Kirkus Review: The Black Ice by Michael Connelly
- ^ Publishers Weekly: The Black Ice
- ^ Amy Wallace: THE WORD: Bosch of the Boulevard in: LA Times, April 30, 1995