The Narrows: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: truly awful
Review: I'm about 1/2 way through this awful piece of junk. I must have read "The Poet" to which this is sequel but I cannot remember. In fairness, I am also rereading "Gorky Park" and the contrast, at every level, is cruel to Mr. Connelly.
Some points: All characters are passive-aggressives, those where there is any development are also depressed, no wonder.
What is it with the weird names he gives female characters?
Clearly Mr. Connelly has to write X pages to fulfill his contract so we get Harry Bosch's thoughts on everything, no matter how irrelevant, and boy, are they are irrelevant! In fact, a hidden message in the book may by that Harry Bosch is a total idiot (wink, wink). He keeps complaining that the professionals are blowing him off (he's retired and bugging other people) and you can see why people hang up on him. He goes on about his car, his hotel room, his daughter,..... Mr. Connelly also spends a lot of time in repitition, describing scenes, arriving at the obvious after mucho circular speculation, etc. but that may be just to show how stupid Harry is.
The other main characters are "Rachel" who apparantly spent the last 10 years on an Indian reservation as punishment for something she did in the previous Poet novel. There is the Poet himself, a shadowy character who is fixing to kill them all gruesomely, I was going to say for reasons unknown but after 1/2 a book's exposure to Rachel, Harry, etc. I am cheering for Mr Poet and fully understand why he would want to cleanse the universe of such idiots.
As I leave them Harry and Rachel are bouncing around Las Vegas being followed by a squad of FBI'ers and the Poet. I expect that Rachel is going to get it because such depressed foreshadowing has to lead to something bad and Mr. Connelly can't kill off his mealticket. Harry has a daughter in Vegas and really gruesome things are possible in that direction including 20-30 pages of Harry's thoughts on father-daughter relationships.

Re Amazon's "Fine Print"; this product is not likely to cause injury or death but it may feel like it.

John Glynn


Rating:
Summary: awesome read!
Review: awesome read. read it in one day. Harry Bosch at
his best.

Rating:
Summary: Great sequel to the Poet.
Review: Michael Connelly's sequel to his hit "The Poet" is a worthy follow up that has a great lead character in Harry Bosch, Connelly's most interesting series character. The action is tease and the story is crisps and it's a worthy chapter in the Harry Bosch series. I rank it right up next to Angles Flight as one of the best in the series.




Rating:
Summary: A Very Worthy Sequel to "The Poet"
Review: Michael Connelly has devoted most of his writing career to solid crime procedurals starring LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch. Almost a decade ago, he took a detour to write "The Poet", a novel depicting FBI agent Rachel Walling's nationwide pursuit of a serial killer who exacts revenge on cops and then disguises the crimes as suicides. It was a work every bit as intriguing as Thomas Harris at his best, and its ending left the door wide open for a sequel. In "The Narrows", Connelly brings both protagonists together to solve the untimely death of yet another name from the past, retired FBI agent Terry McCaleb of "Blood Work".

Crossover stories by any author put me on alert as I'm afraid that I'm about to be served a comic book gimmick (what if Superman and Batman worked together?). Connelly had already somewhat faltered when introducing Bosch and McCaleb in "A Darkness More than Night". However, "The Narrows" corrects that earlier book's mistakes and provides a thrilling conclusion to the Poet's tale.

The action is immediately underway and well-paced as always. Connelly does his usual great job of starting with events that initially seem unconnected and then credibly meshing them through the detective work of his characters. The suspense builds from The Poet's very creepy efforts to place himself back in the FBI's sights through his engame of revenge on his pursuers. The resulting game of cat-and-mouse and its climax(es) are true page-turners.

I'm still not convinced that I like Bosch's side being told in first-person (a convention that began with his last Bosch novel, "Lost Light") because it detracts from Connelly's gifts with wording. As you'd expect, Bosch's thoughts and feelings are very economical, which leads to sparse prose. Scenes from other characters' perspectives flow very nicely in third-person voice.

The pairing of Bosch and Walling is more natural than that of Bosch and McCaleb was in "A Darkness More than Night". This success is partly due to their natural similarities. For example, Walling now finds herself a pariah within the FBI despite her excellent skills, very similar to Bosch's situation throughout most of his tenure at LAPD. During the course of the investigation, they achieve some trust and intimacy, but not so much that the characterization of either is compromised. This delicate balance that Connelly maintains here is what puts this crossover way ahead of his earlier attempt.

But the real trick that Connelly pulls off in this one is the mystery itself. You can't call the book a whodunit because you immediately know that the Poet is back - he advertises it himself. So why read the book? Read it for the true question that's skillfully saved for the ending surprise: not so much whodunit but what-did-he-really-do?

Without revealing any spoilers, the ending provides not only a powerful surprise but also further development in Bosch's life that career fans have surely been itching for. The result is very satisfying for "The Narrows" on its own and also opens up great possibilities for Bosch's future tales.

If you discovered "The Poet" as a one-shot and are looking forward to this sequel, I recommend reading at least some of the Harry Bosch series and "Blood Work" first. The absolute minimum chronology would be "The Black Echo", "The Last Coyote", "Trunk Music" and "City of Bones". You can still make sense of this book without a complete background on Bosch; you'll just be cheating yourself out of a lot of great mystery fiction.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best Bosch books yet
Review: Detective Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch and FBI agent Rachel Walling are brought together to investigate the death of former FBI agent Terry McCaleb as well as the possible reemergence of serial killer Bob Backus, aka The Poet. We also get a dose of Bosch's daughter, his ex-wife, Kiz Rider, Buddy Lockridge, and McCaleb's widow. In the world of Michael Connelly characters, this is a family affair.

Given the integration of previously disparate storylines, you might expect this novel to fail, or to succeed only as a gimmick, in the same way that an Abbott and Costello meet the Three Stooges special is destined for mediocrity.

However, I'm happy to say, this book works as a novel, and is one of the most enjoyable in the series to date. To me, Connelly's biggest shortcomings are that he tends to include a plot twist too many and that his walk-through of investigatory procedurals can become so convoluted that the forward motion of the plot becomes mired in details. Neither of those shortcomings is evident here.

One of the remarkable things about the Bosch character is that, in every novel, we see another layer of his humanity. There are so many dimensions to what makes him tick that he really seems like a living, breathing person. And yet, he's a person unlike any that we've ever known; driven, relentlessly drawn to the act of chasing criminals like a shark pursuing prey. And like a shark, Bosch never stops moving; if he did, he might die.

In this novel, Bosch's pursuit of justice is intermixed with visits to his daughter Maddie, and with his temptation to rejoin the LAPD. His investigations lead him to a mass grave and to a Nevada brothel, among other places. He finds himself in conflict with the FBI, which is more concerned with the FBI's image than with a speedy, relentless pursuit of the victim.

About half of the novel is told in Bosch's words, and half in a third-person narrative focused on Rachel Walling. There are also occasional bits of story that center around the villain. Despite these bits, and some pondering by Bosch, we never really get a feel for the villain as a character; he's just the daily special on Bosch's plate. I didn't feel strongly about the divergent narrative one way or the other; I will say that Bosch's character voice isn't much different from Connelly's writing style.

The writing is very well done, and the novel is well-paced. We get to see the agents engage in some interesting field work, and Bosch's attention to detail is fun to see. Yet, the story is more sparse than most of Connelly's work, with a more direct path from point A to point B. I think it works very well. Moreso than in any other Bosch book, I liked the ending. Endings are hard; Connelly got it right this time.

I highly recommend this book, although I wouldn't choose it as my first Connelly novel. You should read a couple other books so that you can appreciate the secondary characters based on their histories in past novels.


Rating:
Summary: The sad state of publishing business
Review: How bad can a so-called thriller get? If it gets any worse than this I am sure it can cause dementia. There was something faintly interesting in the mediocre Poet but Narrows... There is nothing you could call a decent plot, no interesting characters, no good writing. Oh my what tricks this guy uses in the end! I appeal for a law to ban less than half-baked serial killer "thrillers".

Rating:
Summary: Boring and unimaginative
Review: I like Connelly, and read The Poet.
The biggets problem is that "The Poet" was a thriller, while this book is more of a hybrid mystery-thriller. But the pace is way too slow for a thriller.
The Jane character was weird and left completly unresolved.
The characters seemed to be stereotypes and shallow. Rachel was made even more shallow than in "The Poet".
I kept hoping it would pick up, or something would surprise me and it didnt happen.
The ending was unbeleivable.
Without giving anything away.
Why wouldnt "The Poet" have just killed the guy, instead of telegraphing everything?
Why would he wait 8 years?
It seems like this was a book his publisher wanted, so he gave it to them.



Rating:
Summary: Been there, done that!
Review: THE NARROWS is pretty much a stock-in-trade serial killer mystery. The antagonist is super smart and leads the private eye and female FBI agent around by the nose until almost the last minute. We can also predict that the private eye and the FBI agent will eventually fall into the sack together. And, of course, the FBI agent, Rachel Walling in this case, is persona non grata with the SAC in charge of the investigation. The SAC is a conceited jerk, as is a former student of Rachel's who makes it clear that she, not Rachel, is in charge of the case.

The Poet has returned and Harry Bosch, in response to a call from a former colleague's wife, sets out to investigate what looks like a heart attack. The colleague was involved in the original Poet investigation and Bosch finds evidence pointing to the Poet as the perpetrator. His quest intersects with Rachel Walling's (The FBI agent) when she is called to Nevada to act as a liaison when the poet "sends for her" via some evidence he's left at the scene of a grisly burial scene.

In addition to the above, Connelly has some idiosyncratic writing quirks. He likes to separate his character gestures from the same character's dialogue. He also gives Harry a first person point of view, while Rachel's scenes are written in third. He also loses track of one of his plot threads. While tracking down a clue, Bosch stays in a seedy hotel in Las Vegas where he meets a character named Jane. He's interested enough in her to try to search her apartment, but that's the last we see of her. A well-know author once said that if you show a rifle above the mantel, you darn well better do something with it later in the story. Jane is Connelly's rifle above the mantel.

The story picks up at the climax, but there's an artificial twist in the resolution that seems to imply that even Connelly knew this wasn't his best effort.

Rating:
Summary: The Poet is Back, Harry Bosch is too
Review: I should say right off the bat, if you haven't read Michael Connelly's "The Poet" yet, you should stop reading this review right now and get that book, it will make your enjoyment of "The Narrows" oh so much better.

This story finds Harry Bosch still a private eye and the widow of a former colleague asks him to check into the death of her husband. On the surface it appears to be of natural causes, but she suspects otherwise.

Meanwhile FBI agent Rachel Walling, who we first met in "The Poet" learns to her surprise that perhaps the Poet (a real nasty serial killer) may still be alive. What's more he's apparently resurfaced and is back at work. And his work, which is of course a wave of killings, seems to be designed to set up the ultimate confrontation between the two.

And where does Harry Bosch fit into all of this? Well you are just going to have to read this better than excellent story to find out. But rest assured, your time will not have been waisted as Michael Connelly is just about the best guy out there when it comes to thrilling crime fiction. Five stars from me, would that I could give more.