Book #28 was The Black Echo, the first book in Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series. The back of the book reads:

For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch — hero, maverick, nighthawk — the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal.

The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam “tunnel rat” who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell. Now, Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city to the torturous link that must be uncovered, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit.

Joining with an enigmatic and seductive female FBI agent, pitted against enemies inside his own department, Bosch must make the agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, as he tracks down a killer whose true face will shock him.

This is the second book I’ve read in this series, and I like it. It’s an interesting first book for me, because there’s a lot that’s already happened to Bosch before this book even begins. I also find that these books start off rather slow, but once they gain momentum they keep you reading.

The mystery in this is interesting, and is about more than just a murder. I expect the animosity between Bosch and his higher ups will continue further into the series, and it adds another interesting layer to everything.

Page count: 482 | Word count: 141,971 | Filed in:

Book #61 was City of Bones, the 7th book in Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series. The back of the book reads:

On New Year’s Day, Detective Harry Bosch fields a call that a dog has found a bone – a bone that the dog’s owner, a doctor, feels certain is a human bone.

Bosch investigates, and that chance discovery leads him to a shallow grave in the Hollywood hills, evidence of a murder committed more than twenty years earlier. It’s a cold case, but it stirs up Bosch’s memories of his own childhood as an orphan in the city. He can’t let it go. Digging through police reports and hospital records, tracking down street kids and runaways from the 1970s, Bosch finds a family ripped apart by an absence – and a trail, ever more tenuous, into a violent, terrifying world.

As the case takes Bosch deeper into the past, a rookie cop named Julia Brasher brings him alive in the present in a way no one has in years. Bosch has been warned about the trouble that comes with dating a rookie, but no warning could withstand the heat between them – or prepare Bosch for the explosions when the case takes a hard turn. A suspect bolts, a cop is shot, and suddenly Bosch’s cold case has all of L.A. in an uproar – and Bosch fighting to keep control in a lawless and brutal showdown.

This is the first of the Harry Bosch series I’ve read (there I go, jumping into the middle of a series again). It was great! Usually I’m pretty good at figuring out what direction a book is going in, but this one had 2 or 3 surprising twists that I really enjoyed. And it seems that it may have come at a turning point in the series. Now I need to find the earlier books…

Book count: 61
Pages in book: 448
Page count: 24,614
Words in book: 128,232
Word count: 7,065,337

1,000,000 words surpassed — 2/2/06
2,000,000 words surpassed — 2/14/06
10,000 pages surpassed — 3/10/06
3,000,000 words surpassed — 3/16/06
4,000,000 words surpassed — 4/3/06
5,000,000 words surpassed — 5/30/06
50 books surpassed – 6/12/06
20,000 pages surpassed — 6/29/06
6,000,000 words surpassed — 6/29/06
7,000,000 words surpassed — 7/21/06