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Summary
Summary
After what seems like a routine murder investigation, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch finds himself in Hong Kong facing the highest-stakes case of his life: bringing his kidnapped daughter home.
Fortune Liquors is a small shop in a tough South L.A. neighborhood, a store Bosch has known for years. The murder of John Li, the store's owner, hits Bosch hard, and he promises Li's family that he'll find the killer.
The world Bosch steps into next is unknown territory. He brings in a detective from the Asian Gang Unit for help with translation -- not just of languages but also of the cultural norms and expectations that guided Li's life. He uncovers a link to a Hong Kong triad, a lethal and far-reaching crime ring that follows many immigrants to their new lives in the U.S.
And instantly his world explodes. The one good thing in Bosch's life, the person he holds most dear, is taken from him and Bosch travels to Hong Kong in an all-or-nothing bid to regain what he's lost. In a place known as Nine Dragons, as the city's Hungry Ghosts festival burns around him, Bosch puts aside everything he knows and risks everything he has in a desperate bid to outmatch the triad's ferocity.
Summary
An apparently everyday murder in South Los Angeles takes Harry Bosch (The Brass Verdict, 2008, etc.) further and deeper than a case has ever sent him before. Ordinarily the members of LAPD Robbery-Homicide's Special Homicides squad wouldn't touch a case as routine as the shooting of John Li. The elderly owner of Fortune Fine Foods and Liquors has been shot three times, presumably by the same person or persons who emptied his cash register and the surveillance video. Telltale clues and the testimony of Li's frightened family members, however, suggest that their patriarch may have been executed by triad members when he refused to continue paying for protection. Unlike Ignacio Ferras, still spooked by the bullet he took for his partner, Bosch quickly gets his teeth into the case. But no sooner has he gathered enough evidence to arrest triad bagman Bo-Jing Chang than he's threatened with unspecified evils if he doesn't take off the heat. These evils swiftly assume malevolent shape when Bosch gets word that his daughter Madeline, half a world away in Hong Kong, has been kidnapped. Dropping everything to rescue the 13-year-old he's known for only a few years, he flies to Hong Kong and embarks on a bravura sequence of action set-pieces evidently crafted with both eyes on the movies. ("Oliver Stone will direct it!" Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller exults.) Nine corpses later, Bosch is back in the United States with Madeline. He has to get her settled and deal with her traumatic memories; he has to face the Hong Kong police, who think for some reason that he's a cowboy run amok; and of course he has to solve his case. After the exoticism and high intensity of his Far East adventures, however, these anticlimactic problems are resolved with suspicious facility. A short-story-sized mystery exploded by the triple-sized dose of vigilante justice Bosch gets to dispense as cop and father. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller Connelly nimbly balances Harry Bosch's personal and professional lives, both of which take a substantial beating, in his 14th novel to feature the LAPD homicide detective. Bosch, last seen with his recently discovered half-brother, lawyer Mickey Haller, in The Brass Verdict (2008), investigates the shooting death of a liquor store owner. While the murder has none of the hallmarks of a regular gang hit, Bosch discovers the dead man was paying a weekly protection fee to a man Bosch suspects is part of a Chinese triad. Even though Bosch is warned to drop the case, he doesn't take the threat seriously until he receives a video showing his 13-year-old daughter, Madeline, being kidnapped in Hong Kong, where she lives with her mother and Bosch's ex-wife, a former FBI agent. Bosch flies to Hong Kong to try to rescue Madeline, prepared to face down one of the world's most powerful crime syndicates. Tenacious as ever, Bosch is even more formidable in his role as a protective father. 10-city author tour. (Oct. 13) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Guardian Review
While there's no denying Connelly's storytelling panache, newcomers to the world of LAPD cop Harry Bosch may well wonder what all the fuss is about. In this latest instalment, Bosch and his partner Ferras are roped in to investigate what seems a very pedestrian crime: the shooting of an elderly Chinese liquor-store owner in a black neighbourhood overrun by gangs. Of course, it's more complex than it seems. There's Triad involvement, which turns personal when Bosch's daughter, who lives in Hong Kong with his ex-wife, is kidnapped as a warning to him to back off. The best thing about Nine Dragons is the father-daughter focus - ample compensation for what's derivative and, bar the shock ending, excessively straightforward about its plotting. It's been only five months since The Scarecrow. Perhaps Connelly needs to slow down a bit? Caption: article-octthrills.2 While there's no denying Connelly's storytelling panache, newcomers to the world of LAPD cop Harry Bosch may well wonder what all the fuss is about. - John O'Connell.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Every Harry Bosch novel tells two stories: one involving antiestablishment LAPD detective Bosch's bullheaded determination to solve the case in front of him; the other tracking the hero's inner struggles. This time the two stories come together in what may be the most wrenching Bosch novel yet. It starts with the murder of a Chinese grocery owner in South Central L.A., a man Bosch once met and remembers fondly. The trail leads to the Chinese triads, centuries-old, Mafia-like crime organizations with roots deep in China's history. Those roots seem to lead to Hong Kong, current home of Bosch's former wife, Eleanor, and 13-year-old daughter, Maddie. When Bosch receives an e-mail video suggesting Maddie has been kidnapped, the case explodes. Over a lost weekend like no other, Bosch flies to Hong Kong and launches a one-man vigilante campaign aimed at rescuing his daughter and solving the murder case. By the end of his 39-hour day, Bosch needs a shower, a new suit, and a therapist and a lawyer. The jagged intersection between a cop's personal and professional lives is a recurring theme in many crime novels, but never has it been portrayed with the razor-edge sharpness and psychological acuity that Connelly brings to the subject. And that's layered underneath the nonstop action of the novel's last half the kind of full-throttle, blood-spattered narrative road race one associates with Lee Child or Stephen Hunter. There's always something new around Harry Bosch's next corner, and he has the scars to prove it.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2009 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
BOX 21 (Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26) has something of that trapped quality. Scene by violent scene, this thriller by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom (in a blunt, uncredited translation from the Swedish) never loses sight of Lydia Grajauskas, who was exposed to violence as a child in Lithuania before being duped into prostitution and ferried over to Sweden to cater to the tastes of rough men with disgusting sexual habits. After landing in the hospital when the Lithuanian diplomat who moonlights as her pimp flays the skin off her back with a bull-whip, Lydia embarks on a daring plan to take vengeance - a plan that involves holding hostages in the hospital morgue and occasionally blowing one up with Semtex. For all their cinematic hyperbole, the authors don't contribute to any further degradation of Lydia, who makes a believably tragic model for all the real women exploited by human traffickers.
Library Journal Review
LAPD Detective Harry Bosch returns to solve the murder of an owner of a liquor store in Connelly's latest. Evidence leads to a suspect with ties to a powerful Asian gang. Undaunted by this dangerous connection, Bosch apprehends the perpetrator but then hears that his daughter, who is living in Hong Kong with his ex-wife, has been kidnapped. Without the help of his fellow officers, Bosch travels to Hong Kong to rescue his little girl. There he realizes he's running of out time if he's going to save her before his suspect gets released in L.A. Verdict Connelly (The Closers) unveils his most personal Bosch story yet with this fish-out-of-water story. The pages fly, and although the last chapter feels a bit rushed, it doesn't distract from another Connelly masterpiece. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/09; ten-city author tour.]-Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.