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Summary
Summary
The Dollmaker was the name of the serial killer who had stalked Los Angeles ruthlessly, leaving grisly calling cards on the faces of his victims. Now, with a single faultless shot, Harry Bosch thinks he has ended the city's nightmare.
But the dead man's widow is suing Harry and the LAPD for killing the wrong man--an accusation that rings terrifyingly true when a new victim is discovered with the Dollmaker's macabre signature.
So, for the second time, Harry must hunt down a death-dealer who is very much alive, before he strikes again. It's a blood-tracked quest that will take Harry from the hard edges of the L.A. night to the last place he ever wanted to go--the darkness of his own heart.
With The Concrete Blonde , Edgar Award-winning author Michael Connelly has hit a whole new level in his career, creating a breathtaking thriller that thrusts you into a blistering courtroom battle--and a desperate search for a sadistic killer.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Connelly, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, combines courtroom drama and police procedural in this thriller about a serial killer thought dead. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Veteran crime reporter Connelly's (The Black Ice, 1993) third novel deftly blends cop thriller and courtroom drama in a darkly gripping tale structured around a set of gruesome serial killings. Gritty LA homicide detective Harry Bosch acted recklessly when he killed a man who may or may not have been the serial killer known as the ``Dollmaker'' for the makeup he applied to his victim's faces after he raped and murdered them. Four years and a big demotion later Bosch stands trial for the murder of Norman Church--whose widow, with the help of her tough-cookie lawyer, asserts that Church was not the Dollmaker. Bosch's confidence that he got the right guy crumbles as the prosecution provides an airtight alibi for one of the murders and as another victim (a buxom blond porn star slayed after Church's death) is uncovered from a concrete grave. Our clever, instinctive hero quickly discovers that the murders were committed by two men--one of them a copycat still on the prowl. To vindicate himself and save future victims, Bosch stands trial by day and hunts for the killer at night. A sordid premise becomes thornier and more chilling as Bosch realizes that the copycat is a colleague--an insider in the Dollmaker case. Suspects include Bosch's turncoat ex-partner, a shifty vice-squad cop, a journalist who reported on the Dollmaker, and an eccentric professor of psychosexual behavior. The courses of the trial and the investigation collide in an intricately plotted and turbo-charged conclusion safely arrived at by Bosch's cunning, foresight, and trademark intuition. Clichés persist in characters like the brassy woman lawyer, the foolish bureaucrat, and the hero with a tarnished heart of gold. But the charming, if retro, writing (``The courtroom seemed as silent as a dead man's heart'') and the lurid thrills make this gem as lovable as any tale of serial murder can be.
Booklist Review
In his latest adventure, LAPD detective Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch--whose first excursion, The Black Echo (1992), won an Edgar--moves into Scott Turow territory. Bosch is Exhibit A in a civil suit against the city filed by the family of a man Bosch killed: a man he and the police believe was the serial murderer of prostitutes and porn stars whom the media dubbed the Dollmaker. As Bosch's trial opens, however, a Dollmaker-style note directs the police to a woman's body buried in concrete, a "concrete blonde" who turns out to have been murdered with all the Dollmaker's trademarks after Bosch killed the suspect. Did Bosch kill the wrong man? Strongly plotted and deftly orchestrated, the novel shifts back and forth between the courtroom and the streets, between Bosch's often troubled relationships with his professional colleagues and his deepening love affair with the schoolteacher widow of a brother officer, and between Bosch's unaccustomed self-doubts and his suspicions of others. A fast-paced, classy mystery. ~--Mary Carroll
Library Journal Review
Harry Bosch, hero of the Edgar Award-winning The Black Echo ( LJ 1/92), is in hot water: the family of a serial killer whom Bosch shot during an arrest accuses him of killing the wrong man. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
