The Overlook (2007)

The last entry in Michael Connelly's unstoppable Harry Bosch series, 2006's Echo Park, was perfectly okay. When you're a trusted brand name and your hero is a straightforward, jazz-loving tough, that can too easily be enough. What a treat, then, to open The Overlook, Bosch's 13th installment, which was serialized in The New York Times Magazine, and smell fresh blood. Bosch is hunting not just a murderer but also some missing radioactive substances that could paralyze his beloved L.A. Admittedly, it's an easy, early guess as to who the bad guy is, but Bosch gets into some amusingly tense tussles with the feds as his case climbs up the ranks of national importance. B+