Black Echo

The Black Echo is Michael Connelly’s first detective novel and it won the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery Novel awarded by the Mystery Writers of America. Connelly is a good writer with an easy style and he paces the plot very well, adding new twists throughout so that the reading is kept guessing all the way to the end. Connelly has done extensive research on police procedures and culture and the novel rings true on every page. If you enjoy mysteries and detective novels, this is a good choice.

The main character is Harry Bosch, a homicide detective in Los Angeles, known for his lone-ranger style and already demoted after being investigated by internal affairs for shooting to death a high profile serial murderer. Harry investigates a dead Vietnam vet who appears to have overdosed and died in a pipe by Mulholland Dam. There are a few things that don’t fit and Harry begins investigating when he identifies the dead man as someone he knew back in Vietnam. The story takes off when it becomes clear that the dead man was involved in a high profile bank robbery that has never been solved.

One of the interesting aspects of the story revolves around Harry’s role as a tunnel rat during the war in Vietnam. Since the dead man was also a tunnel rat in Harry’s unit, there is a lot of discussion of what these men did during the war. This is one aspect of the Vietnam war that I haven’t heard much about and I found it interesting. Connelly makes you feel like you are there in the tunnels, feeling the fear and anticipation that Harry felt while reconnoitering enemy tunnels while the enemy was inside waiting for him.


This is the first novel in the Harry Bosch series which includes the following books:
The Black Echo (1992)
The Black Ice (1993)
The Concrete Blonde (1994)
The Last Coyote (1995)
Trunk Music (1997)
Angels Flight (1999)
A Darkness More Than Night (2001)
City Of Bones (2002)
Lost Light (2003)
The Narrows (2004)
The Closers (2005)
Echo Park (2006)
The Overlook (2007)