Book Review: The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly
You have to give Michael Connelly credit – I don’t think he’s ever written a bad book. And for someone who’s written so many, that’s a genuinely impressive record. But the problem with many of his most recent efforts is that they’re like comfy old slippers – they’re reliable and familiar but there’s nothing surprising or challenging about them and sometimes what you really want is to slip into a beautiful pair of stilettoes just to experience something different.
The Wrong Side of Goodbye is more like two smaller novels than one big one. Connelly himself acknowledges this, referring to it in draft form as “an unwieldy block of a manuscript”. Despite the help of his editors, it still feels a lot like that. I kept wondering how the stories were eventually going to intersect but they never did. And when I read the acknowledgements at the end with the reference to the unwieldy manuscript, I realised it was something Connelly himself had struggled with while writing the book.
The first plotline involves Bosch being engaged by Whitney Vance, a dying and elderly billionaire, to track down any heirs he might have but not know about. Bosch is sworn to secrecy, given a cover story and sent on his way with a fat cheque and a cast of curious billionaire employees who are left wondering what his mission is.
The second story involves Bosch working as a reserve officer for the San Fernando Police Department. He doesn’t get paid but he gets a badge, access and the ability to work as much as he wants as long as he meets his minimum hours. He spends most of his time on cold cases and in particular the Screen Cutter rapist. Along with the full-time paid detective Bella Lourdes, he goes about his business rubbing people the wrong way as he always his. But he gets results.
It’s the search for the Vance heir that is the most interesting – in fact it could have been a great book without the Screen Cutter rapist plot and with a board of greedy executives hoping no heir exists, there’s plenty of possibilities of “whodunit” when Vance dies suspiciously – but it’s constantly interrupted as Bosch goes off to do his reserve policing. It’s why the book has a choppy feel instead of a smooth narrative.
Mickey Haller makes another cameo appearance and Bosch’s relationship with him is unusual. You get the feeling that if they weren’t half-brothers they wouldn’t be able to stand each other’s company. They are both uniquely standoffish and prone to exploring the less ethical side of law enforcement. I guess it must be genetic.
I gave the last two Michael Connelly books I reviewed 3 stars and this is another 3-star effort. I’d really like him to up his game on his next book. He doesn’t have to – he could comfortably write 3-star books for the rest of his career and very few people would complain. But it would be great to be excited by his stories once more instead of just placated. I want to be as thrilled as I was when the Bosch TV series started. It was familiar, yes, but it was fantastic, too. It should be the goal of any writer well into a lengthy series.
Still Connelly is always at the top of my to-read list and I suspect he will be for a long time yet.
3 stars
*First published on Goodreads 6 July 2017
