Angels Flight by
Michael Connelly
pbk out September 99
(Orion)
at £5.99
This was another new writer for me, but I have to admit that reading this book was an absolute pleasure.
The story starts with the discovery of a double murder. One appears to be only a poor woman killed because she was the unwilling witness to the death of the other, Howard Ellis. And the police all applaud his killing, because Howard Ellis was a thorn in the flesh of the police, a civil rights lawyer who specialises in prosecutions of the police for brutality, racism and corruption.
Detective Harry Bosch is given the case, less because he is thought of as more efficient, more because both of his staff are themselves black, and since Ellis was a black man, the chief of police and his deputy want to make sure that there can be no possibility of accusations of racism. But since the riots of the early 1990s, all of Los Angeles in on tenterhooks, waiting for the spark that will set off the whole city.
Everyone believes a policeman killed Ellis, yet Bosch doesn't want to find a scapegoat. Especially now, because Ellis's next case, the one he would have started on the following week, involved the prosecution of Bosch's friend for police brutality.
It would be hard to over-praise this book. The story is taut and full of suspense, the characters are strong and well-defined, the plot is deviously twisted, with a brilliant finish. I look forward to the next of Michael Connelly's series.
(
Michael Jecks
- author of the highly acclaimed Furnshill & Puttock series)
Angels Flight by
Michael Connelly