I bought Connelly's CITY OF BONES last weekend. I was
planning on reading it during a vacation at the end of July,
but after reading a few pages I couldn't stop and finished it
this weekend. I had read everything by him up through VOID
MOON but hadn't read anything by him in the last couple
years. After a lot of duds logged in the last couple months,
CITY OF BONES was a breath of fresh air.
The story revolves around a murder investigation concerning
the bones of a child found in a shallow 20-year-old grave.
I've heard it said before that a setting powerfully invoked
can have a presence as strong as a character, and Los Angeles
and the surrounding area is well done in CITY OF BONES, but
it is the mood itself that comes through strongest, a small
island of hope and humanity isolated in a sea of melancholy.
The bones are found in an isolated section of the city in the
foothills. A gridwork is set up for the surrounding area to
coordinate a search for more bones. The gridwork, similar to
a city map of perpendicular streets, is poetically referred
to as a city of bones. Great imagery for a gloomy mood. An
examination of the bones reveals the child was most likely
subjected to continuous brutal beatings. The mood turns
darker. Some of the forensic work on the bones is conducted
by archeological experts at the La Brea tar pit museum. In
addition to information about Bosch's murder victim, the
archeologist tells Bosch that in 1914 the tar pits yielded up
the 9000 year old skeleton of a woman with her head bashed
in, most likely a murder victim. The specter of a 9000 year
old murder in LA haunts Bosch. Superb. It just don't get no
better.
Was it you, John, who recently noted the connection between
Connelly and Chandler? I saw many parallel themes. Although
Bosch has a partner, he is still a loner like Marlowe.
Baiting the police, swimming against a tide of corruption
opposed to an honest investigation, failing any lasting
relationship with a woman, an obsession with revealing the
truth, and a brooding attitude bordering on bathos are all
shared between Marlowe and Bosch. The satisfaction of being a
do-gooder is juxtaposed against the terrible burden of
shattered dreams and detritus that are revealed in the
process. CITY OF BONES also trotted out the standard Chandler
theme that fame and fortune have somehow been sacrificed for
noble causes.
A great book. If I had any complaint at all, it would be that
perhaps Connelly made the themes a bit too overt. Bosch's
girlfriend openly jokes about Bosch being the stereotype lone
tough detective, dedicated to the job above everything else,
going so far as to call him her knight in tarnished armor.
Redemption is discussed as his driving motivation. I'm not
really certain why I should have a problem with the book
openly acknowledging the standard trappings of the genre, and
it wasn't a big issue. Perhaps I associate subtlety with
grace and thought that Connelly's treatment was a shade too
blatant.
One of the things I haven't mentioned is the significant ways
that Connelly differs from Chandler, but I done wore out my
lunch break.
miker
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