I just finished “The Late Show.” I am a slow reader but the 405 pages went quickly and it was a good read. Several times I almost came to dislike the main character, but she managed to “not cross the line” as others have done. About the only loose end was how Trent managed to find out Ballard was a cop, AND her location in Ventura, while visiting her grandmother. *I think we were led to believe that Trent had an insider in DMV to help with the license tag number on her van, and it was registered at her grandmother’s address.

My next hopefully will be “Resurrection Walk,” which I think is a Mickey Haller, “the Lincoln Lawyer” novel with “some” Harry Bosch included. I really have come to dislike the way Harry Bosch “gets things done,” and as I have said elsewhere, if I had read the Bosch novels in order, I would have probably stopped reading by #4 or #5. “The Black Ice” #2 started my dislike of Bosch when he betrayed the trust the “interim medical examiner” had put in him regarding her autopsy findings.

The Poet was fun as we are led from an apparent suicide into a deceptive murder.

[NOTE 06/29/24]: I’m almost a hundred pages into “Resurrection Walk” and Harry Bosch has become an innocuous limo driver for his half-brother, “the Lincoln Lawyer.”

** So now Maddie has surprised Harry as he is having his radiation therapy trying to stanch his bone marrow cancer. She has come up to drive him back home, although he was expecting to use Uber. I’m not saying that old people can’t be useful or productive, using the vast experience they have gained through living a long life, but there comes a time for the End. Not sure how I want Harry to go out, but it might be similar to the end of Endeavor Morse. Morse had flipped roles with his protege, Lewis. And on his death bed, in the hospital, Morse is alone when death comes, and Lewis is out on an active case.

Seems to be a recurring theme, with President Joe Biden “showing his age.” It’s a sad time for America when you don’t have a viable alternative to either current Presidential candidate. Biden is too old, and Trump is just too wrong for America. What turmoil society will be if Trump is re-elected.
[end NOTE]

[NOTE 07/02/24]: Just finished “Resurrection Walk.” It was enjoyable. So I’ve read 26 Michael Connelly novels, since last year. I started the Bosch novels after I finished reading the Matthew Perry Memoir, which I got on October 23, 2023. A few days after I found the Perry book in the Little Lending Library nearest my apartment, I happened to see a picture of Matthew Perry online in one of those famous deaths for the year. I said to myself, “I didn’t know Matthew Perry was dead.” I then went on to find that he had died a few days after I had taken his book. I thought that was hinky, and suggested to myself that I would need to read it. I hadn’t read for pleasure, for most of my life. But now I began to read crime fiction. Only because I had bought several Connelly novels to put in the little lending libraries. I’ve paid anywhere from about a dollar to over forty dollars for these novels, and I have given away a bunch of them. *The forty dollar novel was “The Overhang” hardcover copy that had a special author’s autograph “For Bill,…” I wasn’t the original Bill, but I just felt the power of having the fictional character, Harry Bosch, speak to me by name, and then the Michael Connelly signature beneath. Who can speak for the fictional character better than the author?

I have become very familiar with the Los Angeles area because Connelly placed his fictional characters in actual places. I’m 70 years old and will never visit Los Angeles. Last night I was watching an episode of BOSCH which I had seen years ago, but now I knew so much more. The vignette was taken from “The Black Box,” and a minor character is killed in a tunnel at the Hollywood Bowl. As soon as I saw the two actors walking up to the underpass steps, I knew exactly where they were. I had visited this area using Google Street View and I doubt that I could visualize it any better unless I had actually been there. [end NOTE]