The Closers
by Michael Connelly

reviewed by Byron Merritt

Harry Bosch is a veteran L.A. detective who’s coming out of retirement and joining a special team known as the Open Unsolved Unit. These select few men and women are responsible for finding new leads on unsolved murder cases. And Harry’s old partner, Kiz Rider, is joining him.

You would figure that since Harry’s been retired for a few years, they’d ease him into his new role/job. But no. They throw him straight into the fire, giving him a seventeen year old case of a multiracial teenager, Rebecca Verloren, whose murder near her home was never closed. Harry and Kiz must be “The Closers”. With Harry willing to risk everything, and Kiz right beside him, the two throw themselves at their assignment.

Racial tensions, interdepartmental strife, L.A.’s seedy underbelly, and the tearing apart of a family all rear their heads in this plot driven story. Can Harry and Kiz find the killer after all these years? Why are they sometimes stifled within the LAPD ranks whenever they try to find information on some of this crime’s past? Is the murderer right under their noses?

There were several reasons why this novel read poorly for me. And it came very close to receiving one quill, I’ll tell you. But the fact that the author (Michael Connelly) kept the identity of the killer hidden so well amongst the cast of characters saved it from being a one-quiller.

But the other problems were too overwhelming to give this book a glowingly positive review.

For instance, as the reader, I never fully understood why Harry came out of retirement. Being a veteran of the LAPD, with no heavy baggage hanging over him (he’s a good cop), why would he?

Secondly, I couldn’t picture many of the characters in my head. The only distinctive one’s are Harry and one of the prime suspects whose DNA is found on a piece of evidence. Kiz, Pratt, the Verloren family, etc., were all just paper cutouts for me.

Thirdly, the author’s prose is wanting in my humble opinion. There is far too much telling and not enough showing. Example: ‘He [Harry] called the number he had gotten from the Auto Track search and a woman answered the line....’ ‘Bosch called the work number she gave him and was put through to Daniel Kotchof.  He said he could only talk for a few minutes and put Bosch on hold for five of them while he went to a more private spot in the hotel to talk.’ Just from this one little section, you can see where I had problems. There’s a change in perspective mid-paragraph, from Harry Bosch’s point of view to that of a suspect. Not good. It’s noteworthy to say here, too, that this is about as dynamic as the prose gets.