Rating: 
Summary: Connelly is at the top of his game!
Review: Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch is in my opinion the best hard boiled detective series right along side with Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder. What makes these two series so great besides the obvious great characters and plot lines is that both authors can make the reader hang on to the simplest of tasks: a minor description, a passing thought. These books are to be read slowly and every word is to be savored. That in itself is a great accomplishmnet in todays quick and disposable society. I won't get into any details about the new book suffice to say that I read it in two days. If you are new to Connelly, there is not a bad book in the whole Bosch series. I'd suggest reading them in order. As a side if you haven't read any of the Matt Scudder novels, you are in for a similar treat.
Rating:
Summary: Masterful...A MUST read!
Review: Harry Bosch has given up his career as a detective, but when he agrees to investigate the suspicious death of a good friend he is thrust back into the world he was desperate to escape.Harry gets the call from Graciela McCaleb asking him to find out the truth surrounding her husband's death...it was ruled as a natural death, but Graciela knows differently. The official story was that Terry forgot to take his heart medicine, but Graciella knows he would NEVER forget to take his pills. Harry starts questioning everyone that was in contact with Terry over the last few days of his life and they all seem to say that he was always taking his pills, so how is it the medical report found no trace of his medicine? It becomes obvious to Harry that someone tampered with Terry's medicine. While Harry investigates what happened with Terry, FBI agent Rachel Walling, famous for working on the case of the serial killer known as "The Poet", gets the phone call she has dreaded for years, he's back and he's looking for her. Before long, Harry crosses paths with Rachel and the two must work together to stop a serial killer and find out the truth behind McCaleb's death. 'The Narrows' is another crime masterpiece by Michael Connelly, blending heart-racing suspense with stunning drama the book can't be put down once started. From page one readers will be entranced by a mystery that is both shocking and compelling. Very few authors are consistent with putting out quality titles in a series, and even fewer are good at juggling various series, but Connelly has done that and more...he has taken characters from several novels and combined them into this one and the result is not short of amazing. Expect to see 'The Narrows' on the top spot of all the bestseller lists. A MUST read! Nick Gonnella
Rating:
Summary: One of the best this year
Review: So far this year, my favorites have been "The Narrows" (this guy in a slump is better than most on a roll),"Sunset and Sawdust" by Joe Lansdale and newcomer Harry Shannons "Memorial Day (A Mick Callahan Novel)" because of the lead character. Still, Connolly's Harry Bosch is the industry standard at this point, the one to beat--and at this point the weary homicide detective is still danged near unbeatable. Don't miss a master at the height of his talents.
Rating:
Summary: Redemption for Bosch and readers a like
Review: The Narrows is the latest Harry Bosch novel and the follow up to the Poet. The Narrows is a novel of deception, intrigue, and mystery. I definitely liked this book a lot more than Lost Light, I just felt that in Lost Light when Bosch was a private investigator that there was something missing, the politics of the department wasn't there, Edgar and Kiz weren't really along for the ride, and the feeling wasn't there like his previous novels, Lost Light was a turning point in Boschs life, but The Narrows is a great step towards Harrys redemption back onto the force. I'd rate the Narrows definitely 10/10 as it had a great plot, characters, and story behind the novel.
Rating:
Summary: Redemption for Bosch and readers a like
Review: The Narrows is the latest Harry Bosch novel and the follow up to the Poet. The Narrows was a novel of deception, intrigue, and mystery. I definitely liked this book a lot more than Lost Light, I just felt that in Lost Light when Bosch was a private investigator that there was something missing, the politics of the department wasn't there, Edgar and Kiz weren't really along for the ride, and the feeling wasn't there like his previous novels, Lost Light was a turning point in Boschs life, but The Narrows is a great step towards Harrys redemption back onto the force. I'd rate the Narrows definitely 10/10 as it had a great plot, characters, and story behind the novel.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Only Gets Better
Review: Looking for proof that Michael Connelly is the best mystery novelist today? The Narrows is evidence enough. On a very simple level, this is a mystery novel about a serial killer, "The Poet," and at least 14 murders attributed to him in this current wave of mayhem. It's also about a complex ex-LAPD homicide detective, Harry Bosch, and a frustrated FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit reject agent, Rachel Walling. The characters are complex, conflicted, believable, and stretched beyond what is expected but not beyond the potential of each soul. Even the two major locations, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, are drawn with such intensity and multi-faceted power that they almost become characters in themselves. The plot is intricate, surprising, and challenging -- but ultimately so finely composed and exquisitely executed that even the final shock in the last few pages, while completely unsuspected, still resonates with complete authenticity and credibility. And underneath everthing beats the heart of Michael Connelly's mission: to describe the deadly dance between good and evil, a dance that comes within a hair's breadth of consuming both, but ends with hope. The book opens with the powerful intensity of the threat of evil: "I knew that my life's mission would always take me to the places where evil waits, to the places where the truth that I might find would be an ugly and horrible thing. And still I went without pause. And still I went, not being ready for the moment when evil would come from its waiting place. When it would grab at me like an animal and take me down into the black water." And it ends with the dawn of hope: "I looked out at the city and thought it was beautiful. The rain had cleaned the sky out and I could see all the way to the San Gabriels and the snow-covered peaks beyond. The air seemed to be as clean and pure as the air breathed by the Gabrielenos and the padres so many years before. I saw what they had seen in the place. It was the kind of day you felt you could build a future on." And in between is the best fiction anywhere.
Rating:
Summary: Great writing, great reading
Review: I first read Michael Connelly when I read "The Poet" with Terry McCaleb. I became an immediate fan and read all of his Harry Bosch novels and have kept up with that series and the Terry McCaleb series since then as well as Connelly's other books. I have never been disappointed. I thought "A Darkness More Than Night" with both Harry and Terry in it was one of his best. "The Narrows" allows Harry and characaters from "The Poet" and the other McCaleb books to meet and work together to finally eliminate the Poet. Harry's efforts to find out who murdered colleague Terry McCaleb is a thrill ride filled with well-drawn characters and detailed policework. Connelly is one of the best mystery writers out there and whether or not you've read any of his previous works, you won't be disappointed with this one. In fact, after reading it, I am now going back to reread "The Poet" and then reread all of Connelly's books. It doesn't matter to me (like it appears to matter to other reviewers) that we now know what happened to the Poet. It does bother me that one reviewer couldn't even get McCaleb's name right (they called him Gerry more than once!). If you want a good, fast-moving, well-written mystery, then spend a few hours with "The Narrows". You'll become a Connelly fan--if you aren't already!
Rating:
Summary: Reading this book by Connelly was like going home...
Review: everything was so familiar..the characters..the settings..the cases and crimes and of course Hieronymous Bosch, former detective in the LAPD. This author-driven novel of mystery and suspense is the best of the best. I would not have believed that Connelly could bring together so many of his characters and cases and blend them as smoothly as chocolate pudding. He certainly makes the reading tasty and leaves the reader hungry for more. Meeting Backus again, the villain from his best-seller THE POET, was thrilling and chilling as Bosch and Rachel Walling, exiled FBI agent, track down this cunning thought-dead serial killer. Backus has re-surfaced, his newest victim a close friend of Bosch who worked with him on many cases. Connelly has Bosch circling from the left and Rachel Walling circling from the right...both on a collision course that meets at a burial site in the Nevada desert and ends in the Narrows of the Los Angeles River. A comfortable lounger, a rainy day and Michael Connelly's THE NARROWS will lead you down a path of unbridled suspense and mystery, however you might want to read it in bright sunlight surrounded by friends and family if you are feint of heart. Now that Bosch is back, we hope that Michael will sate our hunger for him in another novel...very soon. I must add that Connelly's adherence to police and FBI protocol is amazing in that it is ever-present and precise yet so well incorporated as to not overwhelm the reader. Thank you for another great one Michael. I hesitate to say this is your best because you keep making them better and better...this is the best so far and I eagerly await the next.
Rating: 
Summary: my first Bosch book
Review: This was my first book by the author and for me it was a good read. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes good page-turning suspense. I wasn't aware this was the latest of a series, but that didn't bother me. Some of the plot development towards the end didn't garner four star ratings, but the writer is so good at what he does I could see myself re-reading this book in the future. I'd put this on the same level as James Patterson "1st To Die" Very Good!
Rating: 
Summary: AGREED - IT'S AWFUL - AND I'M A FAN
Review: I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Glynn. This is not Michael Connelly's shining hour. There is no heart at the center of this novel and you don't really care if anyone lives or dies. Harry is just plain cruel to his late partner's fishing boat captain - why did he take an instant dislike to him? Why is Rachel the Poet's favorite? It is very arrogant of Mr. Connelly to assume that all the readers of THE NARROWS are going to fill in the blanks he leaves in the character development of the Poet - yes, he may have explained his psychosis in the book, THE POET, but the leap from OCD and having an overbearing father to being the kind of monster he brings back from the dead in THE NARROWS? Come on! This is bad TV! And what's up with Harry's ex-wife? Why has he written her off as such a whiny bitch? She hid the pregnancy from him, she moves to Las Vegas and becomes a professional gambler ... what next? The nanny is about the best thought-out and likable character in the book - that is sad. I long for Mr. Connelly's creative character development and interesting details. You cannot find sympathetic contract with anyone in the book.
Read one of Connelly's early books instead - maybe Angel Flight or Black Ice. Back when he could write. Sorry - he really is just phoning it in with THE NARROWS.
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