Michael Connelly's series character, LAPD homicide detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch, had a rough time as a youth. His mother, a Hollywood party girl, was murdered and he was raised in foster homes until old enough to serve in a squad of U.S. Army "tunnel rats" in Vietnam. In "The Last Coyote" (1995), one of Connelly's best and a great introduction to the series, Bosch, while on administrative leave, uses his free time to track down the murderer of his own mother.
The archetypal loner, Bosch is also incorruptible and once put a female FBI agent named Eleanor Wish behind bars. Upon her release Wish became a professional gambler in Las Vegas. The two were reacquainted by coincidence, fell in love, and their brief, unhappy marriage produced a daughter, Maddie.
That brings us up to now. While Wish is working in a Macao casino and adolescent Maddie is running with a bad crowd in Hong Kong, Bosch and his partner are investigating what appears to be a conventional crime — the shooting death of a liquor store owner in South L.A. Initial evidence suggests involvement of a Chinese "triad" syndicate. Impatient with the slow response of the LAPD's Asian Gangs Unit, Bosch uses his cell phone to transmit images of tattoos on the victim's corpse to his daughter in Hong Kong, who reads Chinese well enough to translate them.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.