The Drop - by Michael Connelly

The Drop is Michael Connelly's 24th novel overall and his 18th featuring Harry Bosch.  In this book, Harry is a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department's Open-Unsolved Unit.  It opens with his assignment to a "cold-case" murder investigation dating back to 1989 with  problematic evidence.  Hardly out of the gate, Bosch and his partner David Chu are re-directed to a "high jingo" live case.  Councilman Irvin Irving, a old nemesis of Bosch, is both a powerful politician and an ex-cop out to make his former employer, the LAPD, pay for forcing him out.  Now his son has mysteriously fallen to his death from the seventh floor of the Chateau Marmont Hotel and he is requesting Harry by name to lead the investigation.

The story is full of interesting misdirection and plot twists.  Bosch is a cagey veteran investigator who struggles with two difficult and high impact cases, being a single father, complex relationships with former and current partners, career decisions (e.g., DROP is an acronym for the Deferred Retirement Option Plan limiting his future with the LAPD) and even a few issues arising from exploratory steps with a romantic interest.  If you like Harry Bosch story lines like I do, you'll enjoy The Drop.  If you haven't yet experienced one of his crime novels, it wouldn't be a bad one to start with.

As an interesting trivia fact, Connelly auctioned off the naming of a character in this book. The winning bid of $2917 paid for a medical examiner being named Dr. Borja Toron Antons and benefited the DeKalb County (Decatur, Georgia) Public Library Foundation.