** spoiler alert ** This book had what's (so far) the harshest, bleakest ending that any of the Bosch books have had. I mean, it's not enough that the guy's wife leaves him? It's not enough that his former partner dies in Bosch's home? It's not enough that he gets his few illusions about fellow officers shattered? No, Michael Connelly says, it's not. He gives this answer in a book that teeters very close to the edge of confirming all of the prejudices that it wants to deny.

Basic plot: an African American lawyer who's famous for taking up citizen civil rights cases against the L.A.P.D. is found murdered, and Hollywood's misanthropic Detective Harry Bosch is charged with finding out who did it -- because the usual detectives who'd investigate were all about to face the lawyer's wrath in a court case. So Bosch and his team have to investigate, yada yada, and in the course of their investigation they find out that basically every ugly abuse the lawyer was going to charge the cops with was true. Some of this was propagated by Harry's old partner, who's put up as the department fall guy. Two apparent suicides and two murders later, Bosch figures out who the real villain is, as the city begins to riot around him.

This is where I had a little problem -- well, not even a problem. A snag. The citizens who riot -- the African-American citizens of South Central -- are treated by Bosch's worst colleagues as a mass no better than a pack of dogs. And we're supposed to understand that these are the bad guys (the cops) and their viewpoints are bad. But I'm not sure we're ever shown, convincingly, that that isn't an acceptable view -- because the author uses the device of the faceless, nameless, angry, seething, animalistic mob at the end to solve his villain problem. It's cute and even believable, but it ends up dehumanizing an entire population of a city that his character is supposed to be a part of, a good part of, an understanding part of.

I'm troubled by that, and may have to go back and review it to see if I'm missing something, if Connelly ever steps back from the edge or not.