ACCLAIM FOR MICHAEL CONNELLY'S
THE BLACK ICE
"HARD-BITTENCOMPLEX AND CONVINCING."
San Diego Union-Tribune
"CONNELLY FLIPS THE READER'S EXPECTATIONS UPSIDE DOWN WITH A SURPRISE ENDING."
Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A TERRIFIC YARN, EXTENDING THE BOUNDARIES OF THE POLICE PROCEDURAL IN THE INGENUITY OF THE PLOT AND THE CREATION OF CHARACTER.Connelly's command of police workings and his knowledge of the turf from L.A. south and across the border, combined with a fertile imagination, give the book a high readability."
Los Angeles Times Book Review
"GRIPPINGONE OF THE FINEST POLICE PROCEDURAL NOVELS.Miss it at your peril."
Virginia-Pilot and the Ledger Star
"A SOLIDLY CONSTRUCTED NOVELpersuasive in the depiction of the police ecosystem and relentlessly faithful to the tradition."
Philadelphia Enquirer
"STRONG AND SURE.THIS NOVEL ESTABLISHES CONNELLY AS A WRITER WITH SUPERIOR TALENT FOR STORYTELLING."
Publishers Weekly
more...
"BOSCH IS A FULLY REALIZED AND INTRIGUING PROTAGONIST."
Houston Chronicle
"FRESHANDGRANDLYENTERTAINING. CONNELLY HAS A CINEMATOGRAPHER'S EYE FOR DEFINING DETAIL."
Raleigh News & Observer
"THIS IS ONE OF THOSE NOVELS THAT OUGHT TO COME WITH WHEELS. Once you start it, you're going to drag it along everywhere you go that you might possibly find a few free minutes to read more."
Manchester Journal Inquirer (CT)
"CONNELLY KEEPS THE ACTION AT WHITE HEAT MUCH OF THE TIME AND NEVER LETS GO OF THE READER'S INTEREST."
John Barkham Reviews
"FAST-PACED, WELL-WRITTEN, GOOD READING."
Mystery News
"CONNELLY IS A VIVID STORYTELLER CAREFULLY BUILDING THE TENSION WHILE THE ACTION MOVES SWIFTLY."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"VIOLENT, EXPLOSIVE, FILLED WITH BULLETS, BOMBS, AND VILLAINS, IT OPENS WITH A SHOTGUN'S ROAR AND NEVER QUIETS. Connelly is clearly at home in the hard-boiled milieu he so grittily makes his own."
Buffalo News
"EXPERTLY TOLD, INVOLVING."
Kirkus Reviews
"A FINE NOVELA STRONG ENTRY IN AN IMPORTANT SERIES."
Roanoke Times & World News
ALSO BY MICHAEL CONNELLY
The Black Echo
The Concrete Blonde
The Last Coyote
The Poet
Trunk Music
Blood Work
Angels Flight
Void Moon
A Darkness More Than Night
City of Bones
Chasing the Dime
Lost Light
THE
BLACK
ICE
________
MICHAEL
CONNELLY
WARNER
VISION
BOOKS
An AOL Time Warner Company
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright 1993 by Hieronymous, Inc.
Excerpt from Lost Light copyright 2003 by Hieronymous, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Warner Vision is a registered trademark of Warner Books, Inc.
Excerpt from "La Pistola y El Corazn" by David Hidalgo and Louie Perez copyright 1988 Davince and No Ko Music. Administered by Bug Music. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group,
237 Park Avenue,
New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.
An AOL Time Warner Company
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2578-8
First eBook Edition: Junuary 2002
This is for Linda McCaleb Connelly
One
THE SMOKE CARRIED UP FROM THE CAHUENGA Pass and flattened beneath a layer of cool crossing air. From where Harry Bosch watched, the smoke looked like a gray anvil rising up the pass. The late afternoon sun gave the gray a pinkish tint at its highest point, tapering down to deep black at its root, which was a brushfire moving up the hillside on the east side of the cut. He switched his scanner to the Los Angeles County mutual aid frequency and listened as firefighter battalion chiefs reported to a command post that nine houses were already gone on one street and those on the next street were in the path. The fire was moving toward the open hill-sides of Griffith Park, where it might make a run for hours before being controlled. Harry could hear the desperation in the voices of the men on the scanner.
Bosch watched the squadron of helicopters, like dragonflies from this distance, dodging in and out of the smoke, dropping their payloads of water and pink fire retardant on burning homes and trees. It reminded him of the dustoffs in Vietnam. The noise. The uncertain bobbing and weaving of the overburdened craft. He saw the water crushing through flaming roofs and steam immediately rising.
He looked away from the fire and down into the dried brush that carpeted the hillside and surrounded the pylons that held his own home to the hillside on the west side of the pass. He saw daisies and wildflowers in the chaparral below. But not the coyote he had seen in recent weeks hunting in the arroyo below his house. He had thrown down pieces of chicken to the scavenger on occasion, but the animal never accepted the food while Bosch watched. Only after Bosch went back in off the porch would the animal creep out and take the offerings. Harry had christened the coyote Timido. Sometimes late at night he heard the coyote's howl echoing up the pass.
He looked back out at the fire just as there was a loud explosion and a concentrated ball of black smoke rotated up within the gray anvil. There was excited chatter on the scanner and a battalion chief reported that a propane tank from a barbecue had ignited.
Harry watched the darker smoke dissipate in the larger cloud and then switched the scanner back to the LAPD tactical frequencies. He was on call. Christmas duty. He listened for a half minute but heard nothing other than routine radio traffic. It appeared to be a quiet Christmas in Hollywood.
He looked at his watch and took the scanner inside. He pulled the pan out of the oven and slid his Christmas dinner, a roasted breast of chicken, onto a plate. Next he took the lid off a pot of steamed rice and peas and dumped a large portion onto the plate. He took his meal out to the table in the dining room, where there was already a glass of red wine waiting, next to the three cards that had come in the mail earlier in the week but that he had left unopened. He had Coltrane's arrangement of "Song of the Underground Railroad" on the CD player.
As he ate and drank he opened the cards, studied them briefly and thought of their senders. This was the ritual of a man who was alone, he knew, but it didn't bother him. He'd spent many Christmases alone.
The first card was from a former partner who had retired on book and movie money and moved to Ensenada. It said what Anderson's cards always said: "Harry, when you coming down?" The next one was also from Mexico, from the guide Harry had spent six weeks living and fishing and practicing Spanish with the previous summer in Bahia San Felipe. Bosch had been recovering from a bullet wound in the shoulder. The sun and sea air helped him mend. In his holiday greeting, written in Spanish, Jorge Barrera also invited Bosch's return.
