List $29.98Written by Michael Connelly - Audio book performed by Len Cariou - Unabridged Fiction - 5 COMPACT DISCS - 6 hours
Publisher, Hachette Audio (May 2007)
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A Publisher's Weekly 'Listen Up Award 2007' Recipient
A body has been found on the overlook near Mulholland Drive. The victim, identified as Dr. Stanley Kent, has two bullet holes in the back of his head from what looks like an execution-style shooting. LAPD detective Harry Bosch is called out to investigate. It is the case he has been waiting for, his first since being recruited to the city's Homicide Special squad.
As soon as Bosch begins retracing Dr. Kent's steps, contradictions emerge. While Kent doesn't seem to have had ties to organized crime, he did have access to dangerous radioactive substances from just about every hospital in Los Angeles County. What begins as a routine homicide investigation opens up before Bosch into something much larger, more dangerous - and much more urgent.
Breaking in a new rookie partner and chasing his first fresh case in years, Bosch is soon in conflict not just with the LAPD brass but also with FBI hotshots who are convinced that the case is too important for the likes of the LAPD. Harry's onetime lover Rachel Walling is among the federal agents frantically working the case, making Bosch's job all the more complicated. Guarding one slim advantage, he relentlessly follows his own instincts, hoping they are still true enough to solve the crime - and to save all of Los Angeles from a deadly hazard.
About the Author: Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews.
After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat. In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986 he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors that was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written.
After three years on the crime beat, Connelly began writing his first novel to feature LAPD Detective Hieronymus Bosch. The novel, The Black Echo, based in part on a true crime that had occurred in Los Angeles, was published in 1992 and later won the Edgar Award for best first novel by the Mystery Writers of America. Connelly followed up with three more Bosch books before publishing The Poet, a thriller with a newspaper reporter as a protagonist, in 1996. In 1997 he went back to Bosch with Trunk Music and in 1998 another non-series thriller, Blood Work, was published. Blood Work was inspired in part by a friends receiving of a heart transplant and the attendant survivors guilt the friend experienced, knowing that someone died in order that he have the chance to live. Connelly had been interested and fascinated by those same feelings as expressed by the survivors of the plane crash he wrote about years before. With his friend acting as both technical and emotional advisor, Connelly wrote the book about a former FBI agent with a heart transplant who gets caught up in a web of murder. Connelly's' books have won the Edgar, Anthony, Nero, Maltese Falcon (Japan) and .38 caliber (France) awards. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.
About the Performer: Len Cariou is a distinguished stage, television, and film actor. A three-time Tony Award Nominee, he won for his legendary performance as SWEENEY TODD. His film credits include FOUR SEASONS, EXECUTIVE DECISION, ABOUT SCHMIDT, SHALL WE DANCE, SECRET WINDOW and THE UNTITLED ONION MOVIE. He appeared in the TV mini-series NUREMBERG, and on the series THE WEST WING, THE PRACTICE, and LAW AND ORDER, among many others. Recent Broadway appearances include THE DINNER PARTY and PROOF. His narration of The Jonestown Flood helped that documentary win an Academy Award. He read CITY OF BONES, LOST LIGHT, THE NARROWS, THE CLOSERS, and ECHO PARK for Hachette Audio.
