A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch, #7; Harry Bosch Universe, #10)

by Michael Connelly

A case not solved in the first forty-eight hours had a less than 50 percent chance of being cleared. A case unsolved after two weeks was like an unclaimed body in the morgue—it was going to sit there in the cold and the dark for a long, long time.

“Okay, modern iconography is what you’d expect. The owl is the symbol of wisdom and truth, denotes knowledge, the view of the greater picture as opposed to the small detail. The owl sees in the night. In other words, seeing through the darkness is seeing the truth. It is learning the truth, therefore, knowledge. And from knowledge comes wisdom. Okay?”

References to depictions of owls come up as the symbol of—and I quote—doom, the enemy of innocence, the Devil himself, heresy, folly, death and misfortune, the bird of darkness, and finally, the torment of the human soul in its inevitable journey to eternal damnation.

“There is also some interpretation of the owl as being the symbol of wrath as well as the punishment of evil.

“Bosch knew all of the demons,” he said without turning from the painting. “The darkness…” A long moment went by. “A darkness more than night.”

“All I am saying is that Harry Bosch is connected to this. And that cuts two ways. One, he did it. Two, he’s been set up. He’s been a cop a long time.” “Twenty-five, thirty years. The list of people he’s put in the penitentiary has got to be a yard long. And the ones who have been in and out is probably half the list. It’ll take a fucking year to run all of them down.”

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You don’t go into the darkness without the darkness going into you.