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The Wrong Side of Goodbye is a good read
Book Review
By Derryll White
Connelly, Michael (2016). The Wrong Side of Goodbye.
I love Harry Bosch. Michael Connelly has written 20 Bosch novels, putting the character aside for a while. Now he’s back. A former Los Angeles Police detective, Harry now volunteers at a small community police department and does some private detective work as well. Connelly is good here at showing how boring much of this work is, but also pointing out that it takes persistence, an active mind and a wide network of friends in order to be successful
All novels about rape are sad and demeaning, to both man and woman. To women because of the physical and psychological violation and abuse, the invasive trauma and the unavoidable demeaning of self. To man because each and every man must own a part of the act by reason of gender alone. After rape every woman must look at every man as a potential predator. To write about this subject is to risk much.
Harry Bosch knows all this and takes it to heart. He has a daughter and his care for her makes the offenses of the ‘Screen Cutter’ rapist personal. So in the end this is a story of retribution and respect. Harry reaches deep, looks at himself, and makes some adjustments that make him more likeable as a human being.
There are some nice thoughts around the place of art in our public spaces and the desire of some to make large cities more liveable. Like all of Connelly’s Bosch novels ‘The Wrong Side of Goodbye’ is a good read.
****
Excerpts from the novel:
VIETNAM – “I felt so bad. For anybody to die in a place so far from home and for something that didn’t seem to mean so much anymore. I remember begging you not to go out there to First Med. I begged you.”
PLACE NAMES – “Holy shit! You’re on that thing with the guy and the dungeon up there in Santa Clorox?”
It was an old nickname for Santa Clarita, reflecting its early incarnation as a destination for white flight from Los Angeles. It seemed somehow inappropriate coming from a guy Bosch knew grew up in Beverly Hills, the county’s first bastion of white isolationism and privilege.
DANGER TO SOCIETY – “She’s an artist. Artists are supposed to stay hungry.”
“That’s bullshit. That’s a myth invented to keep artists down because art is powerful. You give an artist both money and power and they’re dangerous.”
– 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.
