This was the first Harry Bosch novel published in 1992.

Harry is reacquainted with a “tunnel rat” that he originally met while both were serving in Vietnam. Although this time, Meadows is dead and stuffed in a drain pipe next to the Mulholland Reservoir Dam. Harry first meets FBI Agent Eleanor D. Wish ( not her maiden name ) on this case. Irvin S. Irving is Bosch’s nemesis “from the get go.” *Recall that Irving in the books is white, but on the TV series he is black and played by Lance Reddick. Both the white & black Irving’s are bald, probably like Mr. Clean.

It appears that Meadows was part of a bank heist, and one of the tunnellers that stole a bunch of stuff. About a hundred pages into the novel the questions are why did the bank robbers choose the vault with “stuff” and not the easier to steal, vault with “cold hard cash?” But, I am hoping that Meadows comes out squeaky clean by the end, not a part of the heist, but merely killed because he came to know too much.

East/Overflow Parking Lot – Pedestrian Tunnel for Hollywood Bowl

Pedestrian Tunnel Bowl Side

By page 200 we’re guessing who has murdered Sharkey and left him dead in a tunnel at the Hollywood Bowl. At first, we are thinking that one of his previous scam victims has laid a trap for Sharkey, but that he calls him “Sharkey” by name seems more sinister, and we are left to believe that someone involved with the bank heist has sensed Sharkey as a threat and killed him.

*In “Echo Park” the High Tower Apartments, which are on the other side of the hill from the Hollywood Bowl, are of prominent interest. They were where a murdered young woman’s car had been left in one of the small garages. **But, when I saw the elevator tower in Google Street View, I immediately recalled seeing this in an old Philip Marlowe (LA detective) movie from the early 1970’s. Elliot Gould plays Marlowe, lives in an apartment next to the top of the elevator tower, has scantily clad and sometimes naked young women as neighbors, and has a cat that is finnicky about the cat food he will eat. And, I just rewatched “The Long Goodbye” in the last couple of days paying particular attention to the apartment interior, and the view (of the garages below) from his apartment. Seems like the balcony where the scantily clad neighbors lived has changed somehow from the current Street View. **Oh, and a young, pumped, thug, Arnold Schwarzennegar, takes his shirt & pants off in a scene, displaying his yellow underwear.

All of the above got me looking more closely at the Hollywood Bowl and the immediate area and at some point I was attracted to this pedestrian tunnel that allows people to park in what appears to be an “overflow” parking lot for the Bowl. I take it that this is the tunnel in which Sharkey was found, or for me it is more interesting to believe this to be so.