A Harry Bosch Novel (abridged)

When he left the LAPD Bosch took a file with him, the case of a film production assistant murdered four years earlier during a $2 million robbery on a movie set. The LAPD, now operating under post-9/11 rules, think the stolen money was used to finance a terrorist training camp. Thoughts of the original murder victim are lost in the federal zeal, and when it seems the killer will be set free to aid the feds' terrorist hunt, Bosch quickly runs foul of both his old colleagues and the FBI.

Harry Bosch is adjusting to life in Las Vegas as a private investigator and a new father. He gets a call, too, from the widow of a friend who died recently. Previously in his FBI career, the friend worked on the famous case tracking the killer known as The Poet. That fact makes some of the elements of his death doubly suspicious.

After three years as a PI, Harry Bosch returns to the LAPD, working with his former cop ally and partner, Kizmin Rider. It was Kiz who helped to persuade him back into the blue religion. Harry and Kiz are assigned to the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit. These detectives are the Closers; they put a shovel in the dirt and turn over the past.

In 1993 Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket in Hollywood. 13 years later Bosch is in the Open-Unsolved Unit, where he still keeps the Gesto file on his desk, when he gets a call from the DA's office. A man accused of two heinous killings is willing to come clean in regard to several other murders in a deal to avoid the death penalty. One of those murders, he says, is the killing of Marie Gesto.

When a physicist is murdered in Los Angeles it seems the killer has no fear of publicity, leaving the body on The Overlook, a site with a stunning view over the city. And when it's discovered that the victim turned over a quantity of a lethal chemicals to his killer before he died, Harry Bosch knows he has more than just a single death to worry about.

The shooting of a Chinese liquor store owner in LA brings Harry Bosch back to the Rodney King riots and the moment a stranger gave a young cop sanctuary. Now the debt must be repaid, and Harry soon discovers the old man's death was no ordinary holdup.

Harry Bosch is facing the end of the line. He's been put on the DROP - Deferred Retirement Option Plan - and given three years before his retirement is enforced. Seeing the end of the mission coming, he's anxious for cases. He doesn't have to wait long. First a cold case gets a DNA hit for a rape and murder which points the finger at a 29-year-old convicted rapist who was only eight at the time of the murder. Then a city councilman's son is found dead - fallen or pushed from a hotel window - and he insists on Bosch taking the case despite the two men's history of enmity.

May 1992, and after four LAPD officers were acquitted after the savage beating of Rodney King, Los Angeles is ablaze. As looting and burning take over the city, law and order are swept away in a tidal wave of violence. But under threat of their lives, homicide detectives like Harry Bosch are still stubbornly trying to do their job. With no effective police presence on the streets, murder just got a whole lot easier - and investigating them got a whole lot harder.