A Darkness More Than Night Author: Michael Connelly | Language: English | ISBN:
B000S1LBMW | Format: PDF
A Darkness More Than Night Description
Terry McCaleb, the retired FBI agent who starred in the bestseller "Blood Work," is asked by the LAPD to help them investigate aseries of murders that have them baffled. They are the kind of ritualized killings McCaleb specialized in solving with the FBI, and he is reluctantly drawn from his peaceful new life back into the horror and excitement of tracking down a terrifying homicidal maniac. More horrifying still, the suspect who seems to fit the profile that McCaleb develops is someone he has known and worked with in the past: LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch.- File Size: 912 KB
- Print Length: 418 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (January 23, 2001)
- Sold by: Hachette Book Group
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000S1LBMW
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
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- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,271 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #18
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mythology & Folk Tales - #21
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in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Private Investigators
- #18
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mythology & Folk Tales - #21
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Fairy Tales - #36
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Private Investigators
"A Darkness More Than Night" (the title comes from a line in a novel by Raymond Chandler, who was Connelly's inspiration for becoming a writer) is Michael Connelly's 10th novel. Six of the first nine star LAPD detective Harry Bosch; one of the other three ("Blood Work") stars Terry McCaleb, a former FBI agent forced into retirement by heart disease necessitating a transplant.
Although Bosch and McCaleb had worked together before, offscreen so to speak, "Darkness" brings them together in the same novel. McCaleb is happily retired from the serial killer profiling business, making a living from chartering fishing trips around Catalina Island in Southern California, when an LA Sheriff's Dept. deputy friend of his comes to him for his help on a strange murder. (In case you are wondering, the Sheriff's Department is a county agency; it polices the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. Crimes within L.A. city limits fall within the jurisdiction of the LAPD.) Against his wife's wishes, McCaleb agrees to take a look. He comes across a clue that the sheriff's deputies missed the first time, and that clue leads him into a whole new area of investigation that eventually points at . . . Harry Bosch.
Some of Connelly's mysteries contain what for me were stunning twists -- "The Concrete Blonde" and "Trunk Music" come to mind. "Darkness," on the other hand, proved to be relatively easy to figure out about 100 pages before the end of the novel. Nevertheless, it's still a gripping read. Most of Connelly's books are dark and edgy, but the darkness and edginess are even more palpable in this book.
I've read all but two of Michael Connelly's books. I think he's a good writer, and through most of his work, I thought he was a good storyteller. Which is why I was unpleasantly surprised with A Darkness More Than Night.
I think this book is a cheat. Connelly presents a flawed premise, pads the middle of the book with a couple hundred pages of filler, and then creates an ending that is no surprise and doesn't even qualify for the term mystery. Connelly is a good writer, but even he couldn't pull this one off.
A recurring theme in Connelly's books is the "good" versus "evil" situation. He also likes his good guy characters to struggle with philosophical questions about the evil that men/women do and what it takes to bring these people to justice. Harry Bosch seems to fluctuate between good and evil to the extent that the guy is more schizophrenic in this book than he's been in any of the others. I would buy that if there were a good reason to make him such an undefinable character. But in this case, there wasn't a reason like that. For no reason other than Connelly apparently wanted to give Terry McCaleb something to do, Bosch becomes a suspect in a murder. And while lip service was given to the thought that an investigation of Bosch had better produce hard evidence that he did what McCaleb suspects he may have done, it seems to me that everyone had no problem believing that Bosch just suddenly decided to become a cold blooded murderer. Given everything readers of Connelly's books have been led to believe about Bosch up to this point, that just doesn't make any sense. 400 pages of fill doesn't make it any more credible a premise.
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