Submitted by Gerti
This
is the second novel I’ve now read by Michael Connelly, and his
writing once again impresses me. In this iteration, I met for the
first time homicide detective Harry “Hieronymous” Bosch, who
apparently is the hero of many of Connelly’s LAPD crime novels. In
this story, Bosch is trying to solve the murder of a liquor store
owner, a man who showed him a kindness many years before during the
riots in LA in which Bosch’s partner was killed. The victim’s
name here is John Li, and he and his wife ran Fortune Liquors in a
tough south LA neighborhood. His son Robert runs another, more
successful store in suburban Sherman Oaks.
At
first, the police think the killing is merely a liquor store robbery
gone wrong, but Bosch thinks there is more to it - that perhaps Li
was killed when he couldn’t make his weekly payment to the Triads.
But Bosch’s attempts to investigate are stymied as he experiences
difficulties working with the men in the Asian Gang Unit who think he
is prejudiced against them, even though Bosch knows China pretty well
as he has family living in Hong Kong. But he rapidly gets an in-depth
course in Chinese culture when his teenaged daughter Maddie is
kidnapped, and Bosch must fly half way across the world to free her.
He
gets some help from his ex and her new boyfriend Sun Yee, who used to
be a Triad member after growing up in a poor area of Kowloon, which
is where the title “9 Dragons” comes from. Bosch goes through
many trials and tribulations with Sun Yee by his side as he comes to
the terrible realization that the kidnappers plan to sell his
daughter for her organs, and the clock on her rescue is winding down.
Much like Liam Niessen in the movie “Taken”, Bosch leaves many
bad guy bodies in his wake while trying to solve the mystery of where
his daughter is being kept.
Eventually,
Madeline is saved and bundled onto a plane back to the States, while
Bosch puzzles out the details of the case and how her kidnapping is
tied to the Li murder. Initially, he thought she was kidnapped after
he put a Triad member in jail, but Bosch finally gets it right, after
typical Connelly twists, turns and misdirection. Detective Bosch gets
his man when he realizes that filial piety is not all it’s cracked
up to be - his daughter and some of her friends (now dead) planned
the fake kidnapping (until it went wrong), and the children of the
store owner are behind his death.
I
strongly recommend “9 Dragons” to anyone who likes a good crime
story. This book is different than another story about Harry Bosch
(“The Concrete Blonde”) that I’ve just read, because it has
that fascinating international crime element which I don’t think
many Americans know about. But bottomline, it’s a great read
because Connelly has a brilliant way with words, and I’ll include
one example here from page 1 – “She watched the clock like the
owner of a candy store watches the fat kids.” Yes, Virginia,
Michael Connelly really knows how to write.
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