THE DROP by Michael Connelly

 Finished Th 9/19/24

This is a trade paperback that either Janny loaned to me or it was a Christmas present. Not sure.

The title refers to a person who commits suicide by jumping from a very high place. 'Splatter' was an even better name used by the police. 

TWO CASES:

1) The son of a city official is found dead on the sidewalk in front of the Maramount Hotel in Los Angeles. Did he jump or was he dropped? It was a suicide. His wife was leaving him and the room was where the couple spent their honeymoon. The city official wanted it to be a murder because he couldn't deal with the shame of suicide. 

2) A development in a 20 year old 'Cold Case' was found. DNA from a blood splatter connects to a single individual, however this man was only eight years old at the time of the murder. He was there, however it was his foster father that committed the murder. The boy's blood was on a belt that dad used on the boy for punishment. 

 From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews: 

"Harry Bosch, the LAPD detective who insists, “I don’t want to be famous. I just want to work cases,” gets his wish times two.

Assigned to the Open-Unsolved Squad, Bosch catches a cold case with an impossible twist. Now that the lab can analyze DNA evidence from the 1989 rape and murder of Ohio student Lily Price, it’s linked conclusively to Clayton Pell, a known predator whose long history of sex crimes has already landed him in prison. Pell would be perfect as the killer if only he hadn’t been eight when the victim was slain. Before Bosch can start looking beyond the physical evidence for an explanation, he’s pulled out of past crimes and into the present by an old enemy. City Councilman Irvin Irving, the ex–deputy chief whom Bosch played a supporting role in bouncing from the LAPD years ago, demands that Bosch take charge of the investigation into his son George’s fatal plunge from his seventh-story room at the Chateau Marmont. It looks like suicide, but the Councilman claims it’s murder, and he doesn’t want it swept under the rug, even if it takes the hated Bosch to ferret out the truth. Hamstrung between two utterly unrelated cases, Bosch tries to work them both, with predictably unhappy results: scheduling conflicts, treacherous leaks to the media, trouble with his bosses and even his old partner, Lt. Kizmin Rider. Even so, it’s not long before he’s worked out pretty convincing explanations for both crimes and can begin the slow, patient process of winding them up before a pair of nasty surprises gives both of them a bitter edge.

Not by a long shot Bosch’s finest hour, but a welcome return to form after the helter-skelter 9 Dragons (2009)." 

I would read or reread anything by Connelly and it's always a pleasure.

THE UNDERGROUND MAN by Ross Macdonald

 Finished Su 9/15/24

This is one of my ancient trade paperbacks that I first finished July, 4 1997 before 'GROSSE POINT BLANK' at the Esqire. 

A link to a deep dive into the novel:

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-underground-man-at-age-50

From Library of America:

"A hot wind awakens Lew Archer in his Los Angeles apartment on the first page of The Underground Man (1971), presaging the conflagration ninety miles to the north which will race through this often breathtaking chronicle of unrestrained weather and people: “The edges of the sky had a yellowish tinge like cheap paper darkening in the sunlight.”

Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, the narrative spurs interest, sympathy, and a mood of growing danger.

A youngster, Ronny, joins Archer in the courtyard of his building, to help him feed the morning’s jaybirds. “The boy looked about five or six. He had dark close-cropped hair and anxious blue eyes. . . . The jays were all around him like chunks of broken sky.” The gentle, vulnerable lad was a miniature portrait of Macdonald’s own grandson Jimmie, towards whom Millar had grown protective. Into Jimmie his grandfather invested his hopes and anxieties for the human future.

Archer becomes fearful for Ronny, whose estranged parents quarrel in front of him. Lew protects the boy from the father’s raised hand. “I want to stay here,” Ronny says. “I want to stay with the man”—with Archer. But the angry father drives away with the son. “I wanted to stop him and bring the boy back,” Archer admits. “But I didn’t.”

The lingering image of the vulnerable youngster stays with Lew as he returns to his apartment; it blends with his own reflection as he gazes at himself in the mirror, “as if I could somehow read his future there. But all I could read was my own past . . . A hot wind was blowing in my face.”

Archer swiftly responds to Ronny’s mother’s plea to retrieve her son from his unstable-seeming dad, who’s driving in the direction of that growing forest fire. “The tang of fear I felt for the boy had become a nagging ache.”

Thus was launched the novel which would prove one of Macdonald’s best: a work which combined thrills and lyricism, psychology and symbolism, in ways Macdonald had been perfecting for years. As the chairman of UCLA’s meteorology department wrote Macdonald regarding Underground, “It is fascinating to see the interplay of Santa Ana [wind] and sea breeze. The growing intensity of the fire . . . tends to accelerate the sea breeze; so the fire, like your other characters, is working towards its own destruction.”

On July 2, 1970, the author told agent Dorothy Olding of his new manuscript: “For me the book has the merit of not being an imitation of the last book . . . Underground Man has more movement, and the movement is in the present, for the most part, though of course everything started long ago when everybody was younger. . . . It has, I think a strong single narrative device and is as much a suspense novel as a detective novel.”

I thought it was a compelling story, but too many characters. You almost need a spreadsheet to keep everything straight. 

CAUGHT. by Harlan Coben

 Finished WE 9/11/24

This was a paperback that Jamny loaned to me and I finished on the day that we (Janny & Joe) went to the  local ball field [SCHLITT PARK] to watch Jamie's kids play ball. 

TWEAK (Growing Up On Methamphetamines) by Nic Sheff

 Refinished Sa 9/7/24. I last read the book and finished on We 8/18/21 and I first completed the book Fr 1/9/09.

TWEAK (Growing Up On Methamphetamines) by Nic Sheff 

This time through I felt less critical of the book. Intelligent and artistic people can be addicts and their experience would be much different from normal people. However, somebody in his position will always have more 'chances' if and when he fails at sobriety. 

And, as always with these books of recovery, nobody is allowed to drink or use drugs responsibly. Millions and millions of people can use drugs and do not have the dire negative effects, but the focus is always that substances are 'bad' and can never be used in a positive manner. Alcohol Annonymous is actually a religious organization regardless of their belief that "it's only a higher power, not god". The Oxford Group was an early 20th century Christian revivalist group and Wilson lifted most of their important tenents for Alcoholics Annonymous.