Black Ice

LAPD detective Hieronymous «Harry» Bosch, protagonist of the highly praised mystery The Black Echo, returns in a procedural thriller set in and around the drug-trafficking underworlds of inner-city Los Angeles and the wastelands of Mexico. When Bosch arrives at a sleazy hotel room where a fellow officer has committed suicide, he senses that something is awry. Noncommittal superior officers, a diffident widow and tales linking the dead man to a newly created street drug called «black ice» (heroin, crack and PCP rolled into one) send Bosch down a winding trail of forensic impossibilities, brutally violent drug traffickers and an ultimately shocking case of mistaken identity. Award-winning Connelly's second fictional effort is strong and sure. His pacing could be better--too often he conveys the same information twice-but his plot and characters more than make up for a slow start. This novel establishes him as a writer with a superior talent for storytelling.