''The Black Box'' is the 25th novel by American crime author

Michael Connelly Michael Joseph Connelly (born July 21, 1956) is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. Connelly is the bes ...

, and the sixteenth novel featuring

Los Angeles Police Department The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal police department of Los Angeles, California. With 9,974 police officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the third-large ...

detective

Harry Bosch Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch is a fictional character created by American author Michael Connelly. Bosch debuted as the lead character in the 1992 novel '' The Black Echo'', the first in a best-selling police procedural series now number ...

. The book was published on 26 November 2012, "in part to honor the 20th anniversary of the character".

Plot

Bosch tackles a 20-year-old

cold case A cold case is a crime, or a suspected crime, that has not yet been fully resolved and is not the subject of a current criminal investigation, but for which new information could emerge from new witness testimony, re-examined archives, new or re ...

which took place during the 1992

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

riots. A white photojournalist is found killed near a burned-out store. Harry Bosch and Jerry Edgar were the original detectives called out to the scene. Riots Task Force later took up the case but it remained unsolved over the years. The case is reopened when Harry matches a shell casing he discovered at the scene to three other murders. Attempts to stall Harry's investigation by his supervisor as well as the police chief, to avoid a bad publicity fallout, fail. In his personal life, Harry's daughter Maddie says she wants to become a member of the LAPD, after having expressed an interest in a law enforcement career in '' The Drop''. The story also introduces a part-time recurring character, Nancy Mendenhall, an IAD investigator. The 'Black Box', just like ones in the airlines, refers to the piece of the puzzle that will tie all ends together.

Reception

The book placed at #2 on the ''

Chronicle A chronicle ( la, chronica, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and lo ...

'' bestseller list for San Francisco Bay Area booksellers, in December 2012. In 2012, ''The Black Box'' won the world's most lucrative crime fiction award, the

RBA Prize for Crime Writing RBA Prize for Crime Writing (Spanish: ''Premio RBA de Novela Policiaca'') was a Spanish literary award said to be the world's most lucrative crime fiction prize at €125,000. It is funded by Barcelona-based multimedia publishing company . Winners ...

worth €125,000.

References

2012 American novels Harry Bosch series Novels set in Los Angeles American detective novels Little, Brown and Company books {{2010s-crime-novel-stub