Product Review
Michael Connelly originally published The Overlook as a serialized novella in the New York Times Magazine; the 16 sections contained 3,000 words each. Although expanded to novel form, The Overlook weighs in as a good addition to the Harry Bosch series. For the most part, the novel succeeds in maintaining Connelly's trademark fast-paced action, plot twists, suspense, and spare, humorous writing-all over the course of 12 hours.
Dr Stanley Kent, a medical bio-physicist who had access to radioactive materials used in the treatment of cancers at hospitals throughout LA, has been found murdered, executed, in fact, with two bullets in the back of the head on a Mulholland Drive overlook. Bosch, assigned to the murder with his new partner, Iggy Ferras, immediately begins to bump heads with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, called in on the case as a result of the potential terrorist involvement with the assassination.
The case is a mere minutes old and Kent's body has barely begun to cool when Bosch discovers that the crime also involves the theft of a case of potentially deadly radioactive Cesium-137. That the FBI agent assigned to the case is Rachel Walling, Bosch's love interest who we met in Connelly's last novel "Echo Park" complicates matters immensely but certainly doesn't prevent the inevitable inter-organizational war over case jurisdiction.
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