THE CLOSERS (Little, Brown, 403 pages)…The year is 1988 and an attractive sixteen year old girl, Becky Verloren, has been found dead of a gunshot wound to the chest. Her body has been recovered on a hillside located behind her home and after an investigation, the police rule that the death was a suicide. Despite the ruling, the case is entered into the "open-unsolved" file as some detectives feel that some of the evidence in the case points to possible murder.
We now fast forward to the present. Detective Harry Bosch is back on the job after a few years of retirement from the LAPD. He is assigned to work with former associate Kizman Rider in the area of unsolved cases and their first assignment is the Verloren case. With the use of modern DNA profiling, not available in 1988, Bosch and Rider determine that this case in anything but over. As they conduct their probe, they find increasing resistance within the police department as old enemies of Bosch start to resurface. Is Bosch getting too close to finding corruption within the department concerning this case? Are his old enemies trying to send him into permanent retirement?
There have been many Harry Bosch stories from the pen of Michael Connelly. They never seem repetitive though, as Harry is not a perfect man. Like all of us, he has his flaws and seems to never fully relinquish his guilt over not spending more time with his wife and daughter. In THE CLOSERS, he is fresh from retirement and anxious to make a successful return to the LAPD with the unsolved cases unit. The story is fast moving and contains no gratuitous sex or violence. It also leads us through many twists and turns with a scenic trip through the various social levels of Los Angeles. Not only are we given a good mystery to keep the pages turning, but we are exposed to the sadness and loneliness of those involved.