The Burning Room

Wow outstanding! The suspense was so thickly woven through this Bosch book 17 I was wonderfully lost in it and couldn’t wait for the next turn of events. Michael Connelly never ceases to amaze me at what a talented, highly effective writer he is. I truly admire his talent and I’m such a huge fan of his character Detective Bosch that I will dearly miss this book series when it concludes as I’ve been steadily working my way through the entire series. It’s always an interesting turn too how Bosch keeps getting paired up in the different books with different partners bringing forth entirely fresh perspectives and engagements between the partners and various situations and suspects and criminals they encounter that just adds so much worthy substance to the overall story and our ability as readers and true fans of these books to become delightfully lost in them chapter after chapter having great difficulty putting the book down. I love the interweaving of the politics at play amongst the local politicians and the upper echelons of the LAPD and how that often polluted dynamic affects and interacts with the honorable and devotedly driven ethos and perspective that Bosch lives and dies by. It really helps the light that Bosch is as a man and as a long standing detective come shining through brilliantly even more. Even to the last chapter when (without ruining the story for those yet to read it) Bosch is called into his captain’s office where the lieutenant is also present and how they handle the most petty, ridiculous thing to ever even consider addressing so disrespectfully toward Bosch after his many, many years of selfless service to the good citizens of Los Angeles. I have to say I also dearly love the relationship, even with its struggles, of Bosch with his young teen daughter helping to guide her toward becoming a police officer as she wants to be following in her father’s footsteps. It shows us such a loving, caring side to Bosch that can be seen at times in his relationships with females he’s been intimate with or even kindness and fire in his fight for the victims of heinous crimes he fights so hard to be a voice for…a voice for the voiceless. There’s not enough I can say about how much I thoroughly enjoy, appreciate, love and respect as well as continue to look forward to the very next book in the series that Mr. Connelly’s stunning character of Bosch has brought into my life and given me a very pleasant, welcome distraction to serious health issues I’m continually fighting through and it feels like a blessing to have that ability to distract my mind from the ongoing suffering from my physical ailments so well. Once again I thank you, Mr. Connelly. On to book 18 now! Cheers!!

The politics throughout the whole book and the whole investigative process was an eye opener. Bosch and Soto were excellent together!

Connelly just keeps delivering the best stories each and every time!!!He tells the best stories in the best way possible!

Michael Connelly is my favorite mystery and thriller author. His Bosch books have brought me untold hours of reading pleasure. Unfortunately, The Burning Room isn't quite as good as most of his other Bosch books. I'm not sure what is so different about it. There is very little action, but Bosch isn't all about action, so that's not a huge deal. If anything, I feel like maybe Connelly didn't have quite as much story to tell on this one, and he tried to stretch it out to novel length. And at the end, he kind of just gives up on the story and then two weeks pass and Bosch is being suspended (again). I don't know, I'm a completist, so I'll read everything in the Connelly oeuvre, but if you aren't, The Burning Room may not be a bad book to skip.

.. or am I being too protective of the founding history of the U.S.A. against the Iconoclasts? (Probably.)I’ve been a fan since 2011 after I watched The Lincoln Lawyer starring Matthew McConaughey, with Marisa Tomei playing the role of Maggie McPherson. I really enjoyed the movie, and as a consumer of a lot of non-fiction economic, philosophic treatise-type books, etc., I always need to sprinkle into my repertoire some Fictional Fun, so I decided to read his other books.When I decide to begin reading books from an author that is new to me, I always start with their first book. This is what I did with Connelly. I’m sure that most of the avid readers in the universe do the same, and it is an investment that we choose to make in our favorite writers.I love the character Hieronymus Bosch. Actually, I like all of Connelly’s characters because I like the man. No, I’ve never even met him. But you can learn a lot about an author’s personal philosophic outlook on life, their view of the world, etc., because that is necessarily projected through the stories they tell, and the characters they create within those stories. And that is why I was stunned that, as FBI Agent Rachel Walling was describing one of the main antagonists, she threw in what is undeniably an Icon of our 18th century American Revolution. One that to this day remains the state flag of one of our 13 original colonies. Walling implies that there is a direct affiliation between that historical icon, and the ideal it represents, and every rouge and racist in today’s America.Rodney Burrows is a repulsive, racist character created perfectly, of course, by Mr. Connelly, save for one major aspect of our first, real deep-dive into the life of this suspect. As Rachel Walling gives her assessment of this man to Bosch, I couldn’t believe that this state flag was thrown into the same trash pile that is White Supremacy, etc. The flag has the War Cry that was and remains to this day an enduring ideal of Liberty and Freedom against Tyranny. It was a summation of the essence upon which our Revolutionary War was fought. And where the opponents of slavery fought for abolition before the founding, yet were ultimately unable to have that inhuman institution banned before the signing of America’s founding documents, the ones that compromised and ultimately did sign knew that by creating this Union, with those documents, they had just set the stage for its eventual abolition… Walling tells Bosch that – among other things – he’s one of those ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ types: “You know, militia sympathizers, Posse Comitatus, Christian Identity – all those ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ anti-government hate groups.”It wasn’t necessary to throw that in. I have no idea why he would’ve done that. He didn’t need to do it. It only served to force me to reconsider the character that is Rachel Walling… and therefore Michael Connelly. If we read that line without the ‘Don’t Tread on Me,’ the point is still perfectly made. We know exactly who this character is and what he represents within the context of the story…Having read every book since his first – 1992’s Black Echo – up to this one, I’m not going to stop reading his books… Unless this becomes a recurring theme. I’m probably being over-sensitive here, but I have good reason to be: I don’t doubt that there have been too many times in all of our lives when we have become a fan of an artist, invested our time and money with them, only then to find that after a few years of success, and the acquisition of wealth that comes with it, the artist then decides that it’s now safe for them to begin to alter the themes and variations that are the basis’s upon which they were able to build that fan-base. They’ve earned enough money that they are now set-for-life, so they take liberties with the fan-base, liberties in which they never would have indulged when they were that starving artist trying to get that first big break. It’s a sad commentary on the deterioration of civil discourse in general, and the respect that we show each other as citizens of differing points of view, that inevitably leads to the end of Discourse and the rise of Ignorance and Hate. That's Irony.I hope I didn’t offend, but I’m a big fan who isn’t a fan of many artists these days. So, with fingers-crossed, I’m off to read “The Crossing.”