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Michael Connelly does a superb job with Blood Work
Book Review
By Derryll White
Connelly, Michael (1998). Blood Work.
This is not one of Connelly’s ‘Harry Bosch’ series. In fact I believe it is his first stand-alone piece since bursting onto the mystery/crime scene with ‘The Black Echo,’ which introduced Harry Bosch, L.A.P.D. in 1982.
Connelly spends some time here taking the reader through all the steps which occur in investigating and documenting a murder case. It is interesting, with a lot of detail many readers might not think of. Things like identifying the handgun from one of the ATM videos, recognizing it as expensive and then combing through years of robbery reports to see if it was stolen. Connelly is great on police procedural details.
In this novel Terrell McCaleb is a retired (medical reasons) F.B.I. agent who used to catch all the serial murder Investigations. He was so good that the Bureau finally moved him permanently to L.A., the centre of so many multiple murders. It was referred to as “blood work.“
McCaleb, terminally ill, receives a new heart which leads him into a new but unofficial case. The questions about organ donation that Michael Connelly raises are, I think, designed to make one think long and hard.
This is a very good story in which Connelly leads McCaleb into some truly dark places and actions. Wanting to quit, even die, McCaleb pushes through. Connelly does a superb job with this novel.
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Excerpts from the novel:
BUREAUCRACY – When McCaleb had been with the bureau, the agents he worked with called this part the “hard tango.” It was the finesse moves they had to make with the locals. It was an ego thing and a territorial thing. One dog doesn’t piss in another dog’s yard. Not without permission.
HOMICIDE COPS – McCaleb believed there was a sacred bond between the victim and the investigator. All homicide cops understood this. Some took it straight to the heart. Some less so, simply as a matter of psychological survival. But it was there in all of them. It didn’t matter if you had religion, if you believed the soul of the departed watched over you. Even if you believed that all things ended with this final breath, you still spoke for the dead. Your name was whispered on the last breath. But only you heard it. Only you knew it. No other crime came with such a covenant.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
