Angels Flight [Paperback]

Michael Connelly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 1999

Harry Bosch finds himself yet again in charge of a case that no one else will touch...This time his job is to nail the killer of hot shot black lawyer Howard Elias. Elias has been found murdered on the eve of going to court on behalf of Michael Harris, a man the LAPD believes guilty of the rape and murder of a twelve-year-old girl. Elias had let it be known that the aim of his civil case was not only to reveal the real killer but to target and bring down the racist cops who beat up his client during a violent interrogation. Now it's all down to Bosch - and he's got to take a long, hard look at some of his colleagues in a police department that is rife with suspicion and hatred.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Michael Connelly, whose novel The Poet won the 1997 Anthony Award for Best Mystery, is already recognized as one of the smartest and most vivid scribes of the hard-boiled police procedural. Now, with his much-anticipated sixth Harry Bosch novel, Angels Flight, Connelly offers one of the finest pieces of mystery writing to appear in 1998. Bosch is awakened in the middle of the night and, out of rotation, he is assigned to the murder investigation of the high-profile African American attorney Howard Elias. When Bosch arrives at the scene, it seems that almost the entire LAPD is present, including the IAD (the Internal Affairs Division). Elias, who made a career out of suing the police, was sadistically gunned down on the Angels Flight tram just as he was beginning a case that would have struck the core of the department; not surprisingly, L.A.'s men and women in blue become the center of the investigation. Haunted by the ghost of the L.A. riots, plagued by incessant media attention, and facing turmoil at home, Bosch suddenly finds himself questioning friends and associates while working side by side with some longtime enemies.

Angels Flight is a detective's nightmare scenario and is disturbingly relevant to the racially tense last decade of the 20th century. Amidst the twists and turns of his complex narrative, Connelly affirms his rightful place among the masters of contemporary mystery fiction. --Patrick O'Kelley --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Hollywood homicide detective Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch (Trunk Music, 1996, etc.) is up to his very stiff neck in politics, police corruption and racial tension. The echo of the Rodney King case is almost deafening when Howard Elias, an African American lawyer famous for suing the LAPD for racially motivated brutality, is shot dead on the short train run up a steep hill in downtown L.A. known as Angels Flight. Bosch and his team?a black woman named Kizmin Rider and a black man named Jerry Edgar?are assigned the highly sensitive case. Although Bosch sniffs racial and departmental political hokum among the brass, he doggedly focuses on finding the killer, knowing that cops will be among the suspects. It all smells even worse when Bosch discovers signs of evidence tampering by the first cops on the crime scene and learns that the civilian attorney assigned to oversee the investigation had personal ties to Elias. A bit of a cowboy anyway, Bosch is even more ornery than usual, since his wife has gone AWOL and returned to gambling. Further hampered by a secretive and even obstructive departmental leadership and by his former partner's apparent links to the crime, Bosch moves well outside the rules to discover the ugly motivation for the killing. Connelly has all the hard-boiled procedural moves down and gives Bosch a reckless crusader's moral code. The finale, set against riots, delivers a brutal, anti-establishment sort of justice. This isn't Connelly's best; the plot is sufficiently ornate to diffuse tension, and Bosch seems to be evolving from the true character of early books into a sort of icon, a Dirty Harry for our times. Simultaneous Time Warner audio; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Orion Paperbacks (September 16, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0752826948
• ISBN-13: 978-0752826943
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (196 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,098,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing ' a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews.

After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat. In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written.

After three years on the crime beat in L.A., Connelly began writing his first novel to feature LAPD Detective Hieronymus Bosch. The novel, The Black Echo, based in part on a true crime that had occurred in Los Angeles , was published in 1992 and won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America. Connelly has followed that up with 18 more novels. His books have been translated into 31 languages and have won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Shamus, Dilys, Nero, Barry, Audie, Ridley, Maltese Falcon (Japan), .38 Caliber (France), Grand Prix (France), and Premio Bancarella (Italy) awards.

Michael lives with his family in Florida.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars They don't get much more "noir" than this one, December 22, 2000

By 

Douglas A. Greenberg (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Angels Flight (Harry Bosch) (Mass Market Paperback)

Ever since I read Connelly's *The Black Echo*, the first of the Harry Bosch mysteries, I've been hooked on these wonderfully complex, fabulously written novels. Bosch is (predictably) "hard-boiled and melancholy, but with a heart of gold," as befits this venerable fictional genre. Yes, there are many, MANY cop/P.I. detective series out there, but in my estimation, Connelly's Bosch series is the best, and *Angels Flight* shows why.

The theme in this novel is the atmosphere of racial distrust and recriminations against the Los Angeles police that has emerged in the wake of the Rodney King cases and the O.J. Simpson trial. Connelly succeeds for the most part in capturing the tragic essence of what has been wrought by the legacy of police misconduct and the African American reaction to it in the city of angels.

Not surprisingly, he is most effective in presenting the police perspective here: the outrage and frustration at the deterioration of police credibilty in the community overall; the combination of anger and grudging admiration that a get-the-police black attorney might elicit from conscientious police professionals; the increasing disillusionment as the politicization of police affairs becomes ever more complete.

If there is a weakness in Connelly's adventuresome foray into political territory, it's related to the delicate and difficult race-related theme he has addressed here. To succeed totally in this endeavor, Connelly must navigate through some extremely tricky sociological issues, and it becomes apparent that he might be in a bit over his head in this regard. When attempting to provide the African American perspective on police presence and conduct in LA, for example, Connelly does a decent but not outstanding job. Clearly, here he is an "outsider."

This flaw is forgiveable, of course, in light of the fact that his principal task is to provide an engrossing police mystery. Here, he succeeds brilliantly, as always. Along the way, he presents a picture of contemporary society that is dark, frightening, almost hopeless. To say that this novel is "noir" is an understatement. Connelly's portrayal of human nature, contemporary police and civil politics, and the ongoing deterioration of "the California dream" in the city of angels is stunningly powerful. This is not a book that will appeal to the faint of heart.

As always, there is a thread in this novel that continues "the story" where it left off in his previous mystery in which Bosch was the protagonist. Consequently, whereas this book certainly can provide a can't-put-it-down read for those who have never read any of the previous Bosch mysteries, these books are best appreciated if they are read in chronological order, beginning with *The Black Echo*.

Currently, I've been reading Dennis Lehane and Robert Crais mysteries. These are terrific, but as I turn the pages I can't wait for the next Bosch novel to be released.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Connelly doesn't disappoint!, September 3, 2000

By 

Simonetta Cavilli - See all my reviews

This review is from: Angels Flight (Harry Bosch) (Mass Market Paperback)

Angels Flight is not as good as Void Moon, but it is still a great crime novel. Connelly is your better-than-average crime/suspense novelist and he doesn't disappoint with Angels Flight.

Harry Bosch is great & the story basically is about the murder of 2 people, one being a high-profile lawyer. It is better than just your average 'whodunit' as it is still political enough to be interesting and still clever enough to keep you guessing throughout the book, with enough twists to make it believable.

After a few crappy crime/suspense novels that I have read in the last couple of days, Connelly was just the ticket to get me back into great ones again & I have just ordered all his books!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Connelly does it again, January 8, 2000

By 

Spock (State College, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Angels Flight (Harry Bosch) (Mass Market Paperback)

I am an avid reader of this genre of books, and Michael Connelly has never disappointed me with any of his efforts that I've read (The Poet, Trunk Music, and now this) I am 30 chapters into this book and could barely put it down long enough to get on the internet and check my e-mail.