City of Bones by Michael Connelly

Ali Mark
Mar 15, 2016
3 min read

Story Line - 5

Writing Style - 5

Characters - 4

Excitement Factor - 4.5

Believability for type and topics - 5

Similarity to other books - 4

Cover art - 4.5

Title Relevance - 5

Goodreads users gave this book a 4.02. I think it was more deserving of a 4.56.

Published in 2006.

Pages: 421.

Number of books by author: 101.

Genre: Fiction.

When Bosch gets a routine call that someone's dog brought home a bone - a human bone, that is, he doesn't take it too seriously until he hears that the owner is a retired doctor. Bosch begins his investigation, but along the way, lives are taken and his career is in a world of trouble. Will he solve the cold case? Or will he grow cold?

You may like this book if you like the following sub-genres:

Crime/Detective
Murder
Cold Case

This book was just as good as the other two Connelly books I've read. Overall, I would've seen this book as a 4. I was interested most of the way through, but it didn't do anything to really wow me. So this is just a brief-overview of how I felt towards novel.

The character development was kind of weak. After reading two other books by Connelly, I've noticed that all of the detective-types (anyone involved in law enforcement, really) tends to have the same personality and behaviors. So it was kind of like reading about the same character 10 different ways - or however many officers were involved in this story. For Bosch (the main character), his growth seemed rather important in this story. I won't ruin any spoilers, but I found it interesting how his growth was definite. He really became sure of nothing, while being entirely sure of everything, and I think that was a really big moment for the Harry Bosch novels.

The writing style really pushed through the excitement of this story line. If you've read anything he's written, you know that he likes to throw in curve balls and loves to play with your mind - it is afterall a crime-mystery. But he really does an excellent job of helping you walk through the crime from a detective stand point (or in some cases, from the perspective of the lawyers). But because he does this so well, you feel like you're involved. You start to question the evidence, and question the tactics - you feel very involved in the entire process as if you're a new detective in training. It makes the story that much more interesting/entertaining. This story in particular wasn't all that unbelievable. I think, some of the others have been pushing the limits, but I thought this was something that you'd read about in the news (of course, it would never happen where you live because things like this never happen where you live), but it was really detailed in being sure that this was realistic. I don't know how unique this story line is - it's a cold case, so I'm sure there's some author out there who's writing about cold cases all the time, so I docked it to a 4.

The cover art was slightly disappointing given the title (which couldn't have been more dead on). I really expected to see some bones on the cover, but - it was disappointing that all I got was some trees.... I mean, it works and all, but I think it could've been more powerful to see x-y-or-z that was relating to the story line.