My review of Michael Connelly‘s new Harry Bosch novel, The Drop, appears in today’s Washington Post—a short review in this case, and given the surprising breadth and depth of the novel’s plot, I found myself wishing I’d had more space to write about the book. Still, I hope I gave enough of a sense of its various plot strands—suicide! a serial killer! political corruption! police brutality! all skipping along at a pulse-pounding pace!—and that I touched on Connelly’s strengths and weaknesses here (one key weakness, in fact, which nagged me right on through to the end). Here’s the opening of the review:
Each strand of Michael Connelly’s latest thriller moves the novel’s title, “Drop,” in a fresh direction. LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, now on his second tour of duty with the Open-Unsolved Unit, begins investigating a 1989 murder after new tests on old evidence — a small drop of blood — reveal a match with a convicted predator. Before he can pursue that lead, however, Bosch finds himself pulled onto a higher-profile case: A city councilman’s son jumped, fell or was dropped from a seventh-floor hotel balcony. And back in the office, Bosch receives disappointing news about his Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP). That imperiled plan has kept him in the field and maintained the income he desperately needs as a newly single parent to a 15-year-old daughter (a relationship that really blossoms in this book).
Read the full review here.
Additionally, I’m a little belated in announcing here another of my own stories that was recently published: “Locked Out” in the October issue of the online magazine Plots With Guns. The story itself was inspired by something that my wife and I happened across at an all-day country music concert a couple of years back—a troubling encounter still, as you might imagine after seeing where the story goes. I’m pleased to have been published amongst an impressive rosters of stories by writers including Patti Abbott, Matthew C. Funk, Stephen Graham Jones, and Charles Dodd White, among others. Check out the full issue here. — Art Taylor
Art & Literature 