Trunk Music, Angels Flight, & A Darkness More than Night

I'll be reviewing three books today, book numbers five and six of the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly. And then another book with Harry Bosch in it, but I'm not going to call it book seven.

I'll start with Trunk Music: Loved it. The character development is again very well done, the prose was incredible, and the plot was a masterpiece. I kind of guessed who was guilty before Harry did, but I wasn't sure, just an instinct I had that Harry didn't have until later. That's okay, though. Solving it Harry's way was a much better story.

Next comes Angels Flight, a darker book in a series of books that aren't exactly light and happy. It covered some pretty serious subject matter (racial stuff, police brutality, child molestation, societal unbalance, riots, etc), and there is no way to cover all of that and not have it touch you in a deep way. Once again we get plots within plots, and plots outside of plots, and plots running in circles around plots... all woven together into an incredible story. I had no idea who the killer was until Harry was ready to start figuring it out. Part of the resolution was a bit too... contrived. I mean, sure, it was poetic, but I guess it was just a bit too easy. I'm okay with it, it was still a great book and probably the best resolution possible under the circumstances.

And then, unfortunately, comes A Darkness More than Night. I didn't enjoy it at all. For starters, it's not really a Harry Bosch book. I mean, Harry is in it, but this is really book two of the Terry McCaleb series, where the main character is a retired FBI agent. Honestly, this book felt more like something planned by the Marketing Department (not enough people are reading this other series, you need to include Harry in a book so fans of that series will get interested in this series). It was terrible, it was frustrating, and it had a flimsy plot that I figured out fairly early on.

Book Rating: Trunk Music: 10 of 10
Book Rating: Angels Flight: 10 of 10
Book Rating: A Darkness More than Night: 6 of 10

Series Rating: Harry Bosch: 10 of 10

I'm keeping the series at a 10, but another book like Darkness and it will start going down.







1. The Black Echo (1992)
2. The Black Ice (Harry Bosch) (1993)
3. The Concrete Blonde (1994)
4. The Last Coyote (1995)
5. Trunk Music (1997)
6. Angels Flight (1999)
7. A Darkness More Than Night (2001)
8. City of Bones (2002)
9. Lost Light (2003)
10 The Narrows (2004)
11. The Closers (2005)
12. Echo Park (2006)
13. The Overlook (2007)
14. The Brass Verdict (2008)
15. Nine Dragons (October 2009)