Why would Anneke Jesperson, a Danish photojournalist, wade
into the L.A riots following the Rodney King verdict? With the body count
rising by the hour, Detective Harry Bosch, who made the report of Jesperson’s
execution-style murder in an alley in South Central, didn’t have the luxury of
finding out. He had no sooner bagged a shell casing at the scene, when he and
his partner were called to the next murder. No coroner, no CSI—just another
victim.
But 20 years later, Bosch is still curious. Now a member of
LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Case unit, Bosch specifically asked to be assigned to the
case. The murder book is sketchy, at best. A few calls came in over the years
inquiring about the status of the case, but no one had even taken the time to
go through the victim’s knapsack or other belongings. With the anniversary of
the riots looming, the head of the unit wants to prove that the LAPD is still
actively working all unsolved murders from those terrible days.
Bosch starts with the only evidence he’s got: the shell
casing. He traces it to several other crimes, and tries to follow it back to
who might have had it at the time of the riots. He also focuses on Jesperson’s
belongings, to attempt to understand what brought her first to the US, and then to
LA.
In Connelly’s skillful hands, what could have been a routine
police procedural becomes a multi-layered, engrossing read. On the Mt. Rushmore
of current great American mystery writers, Connelly’s face would be front and
center.
