Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch (b. 1950) is a tenacious investigator with a strong personal code that drives him to seek justice for murder victims.
Notes[]
- This page and all other pages in the Harry Bosch Wiki describe events from the books by Michael Connelly. Major changes in the plot and characters have been made in the Amazon streaming series Bosch, such that the books and t.v. series are not in agreement on many points. For key characters there is a section at the bottom of the Wiki page with the heading Portrayal, giving a brief discussion of the Amazon series. There is also a separate page for the series under Bosch.
- These Wiki pages contain SPOILERS! Don't read these pages unless you want to know the identity of killers and other important details affecting Harry Bosch.
Background[]
Harry is the son of Marjorie Lowe and J. Michael Haller. He is the older half-brother of Mickey Haller, the ex-husband of Eleanor Wish, the uncle of Hayley Haller, and the father of Madeline Bosch. He also has three younger half-sisters, and another younger half-brother. He was named after a 15th Century Dutch painter, and his first name rhymes with the word "anonymous" while his surname (as shown in a poetic letter written by a serial killer) rhymes with "gosh."
He is registered as an independent voter, and his cell phone number is (323) 244-5631.
He lives in a cantilever-style house at 7203 Woodrow Wilson Drive in the hills above Studio City. He has owned the home since about 1984. He was able to make the down payment on the house with $50,000 paid to him by Universal Studio for the right to use his name in a TV miniseries about a series of murders of beauty shop owners. The deck has a panoramic view to the northeast toward Cahuenga Pass, Universal Studio, Burbank and Glendale. The house was severely damaged in the Northridge earthquake and later demolished by the city. Bosch rebuilt it and added a second bedroom. He also added a trap door in the hallway leading to the slope underneath the house. While his house was being rebuilt, he lived for a year at the Mark Twain Hotel. By 2002 he says he has paid off the mortgage on the house[1] [although in The Narrows he contradicts that]. He strongly identifies with L. A., so strongly that he believes he would die if he tried to live anywhere else.
Physically, Bosch is a few inches under six feet tall and is lean but strong. He has curly hair, dark eyes, and a mustache. He has a First Infantry tattoo on his shoulder. He formerly had tattoos on his knuckles that said "Hold Fast." When he entered the army his sergeant (Rosser) forced him to remove these tattoos by repeatedly hitting a brick wall with his fists. He has a knife scar on his left hip from the Viet Nam war, and a bullet scar on his shoulder from the Beverly Hills Safe and Lock shootout. Bosch suffers from insomnia, drinks coffee to excess, smokes two packs a day (although he has worked on quitting since 1998) and drinks liquor heavily at times (though he stopped drinking in 2009 when Maddie moved in with him) but is otherwise healthy. He is left-handed.
In personality, he suffers from anger and authority issues most likely related to a combination of his traumatic childhood and experiences in Viet Nam. He shows symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome for which he received minimal treatment from the Veterans Administration. A report by an unnamed LAPD psychologist in about 1991 indicated that he is desensitized to violence and accepts it as a part of his entire life. He prefers to work alone, often keeping important facts to himself, and is sometimes called a "one man army". Moreover, he often "freelances", working on cases that are not assigned to him or cases that have been taken away from him. He is highly impatient and often skirts the rules to get faster results. On the other hand, he sometimes shows surprising compassion for other people, especially crime victims and young people. He believes that all murder cases deserve the best effort by himself and the department, whether the victim is a prostitute or a wealthy, powerful person.
He is a jazz aficionado, especially the saxophone. He has a number of special skills. He picks locks easily and uses this skill often, sometimes too often. He is also trained to hypnotize witnesses to get more detailed information from them, but he doesn't get to use this skill because it is no longer admissible in court. His greatest strength is his relentless pursuit of the truth.
Early Life[]
Bosch was born at the Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles in 1950, and his birth certificate lists "Hieronymus Bosch" as his father. His mother did not want to give him either her surname or his father's and so used the name of an artist she admired. Growing up, Bosch did not know his father; his mother was a prostitute, and he was taken from her custody in July of 1960 and placed in the McClaren Youth Hall. He has a few memories of his mother. One memory is riding the Angel's Flight funicular with her when they were looking for a place to live. He has a vague memory of going to the Hollenbeck station with his mother for an unknown reason. Another memory is going to the LA Farmers Market with his mother on Saturday mornings and watching the baker decorate cakes. He also remembers that at one time his mother had a two-tone Plymouth Belvedere. He remembers when another boy drowned in the L.A. River and his mother told him to stay out of the Narrows. As an adult he has only one photo of his mother which he keeps in a locked, fireproof box.
When his mother was strangled and dumped in an alley off of Hollywood Boulevard in October 1961, Detective Jack McKittrick informed Harry, and Bosch was reclassed as Available to Adopt at McClaren, at which point he began moving through a series of foster homes. In The Black Ice, however, it is said that Harry was informed of his mother's death by the housemother at McClaren Youth Hall[2]. Perhaps this was just a shorthand way of saying that the housemother informed him that a policeman was there to talk to him about his mother. He said he had to identify his mother's body but no details are given.
He didn't stay long in any one foster home. In the summer of 1964 when he was 14 he ran away from one of the foster homes and lived on the beach for awhile, learning to surf in the process. At one foster home he took his foster father's Corvette for a joyride (year and name of foster parents not known). He was kicked out of that foster home, then appeared before a juvenile judge and was sent back to McClaren. In 1965, he was taken in by Ed and Eileen Foster around the same time as the Watts Riots. At some point in time he was taken in by Earl Morse, who believed that Harry, a southpaw, could be taught to pitch. It is unclear when he went to the Morses and how long he stayed with them. In one instance he said he was 13 years old and ran away after only two months. In another instance he said he remained with the Morses until he was 17. He ran away from the Morse home and spent some time hanging around San Pedro, sleeping in an unlocked towboat named Rosebud and getting tattoos. He attended Hollywood High school but did not finish, and he later obtained a GED. He attended L.A. City College but did not complete any degree and has no formal education beyond that.
In the draft lottery of 1968 he drew a very low number which would have guaranteed that he would be drafted. At that time he chose to join the Army, saying he forced Earl Morse to sign his military enlistment form by insisting he'd never pick up a baseball again. However, this timeline is again subject to some discrepancies. Following basic training, he volunteered for the infantry and was trained at tunnel school in San Diego.
In Viet Nam he volunteered to serve as a "tunnel-rat" with the First Infantry alongside Billy Meadows during two tours in the Vietnam War, and was stationed in the Echo Sector of Củ Chi district in Ho Chi Minh City in late 1969 and early 1970. He was sometimes known by the nickname Hari Kari. At one time, he served with fellow tunnel-rats Bunk Simmons, Ted Furness, and Gabe Finley under Captain Gillette in the Bến Cát District of Binh Duong Province, and was the only one of the four soldiers to survive the operation. In December 1969 he was wounded by a bamboo spear in a tunnel. His wound became infected and he spent four weeks recuperating on the hospital ship Sanctuary. He was given the Purple Heart medal twice for injuries in Viet Nam.
After returning to the United States during the Summer of 1970, Harry began the search for his father, beginning at the county recorder's office. Finding nothing useful, he hired a lawyer to petition the presiding judge of the juvenile dependency court to allow him to examine his own custody records, and there he discovered that J. Michael Haller had filed all of the paperwork in Marjorie Lowe's attempts to regain custody of Harry. When Bosch later pulled his mother's cases from the archives at the Criminal Courts Building, he discovered that Haller had also represented her on six loitering arrests.
At that point, he deduced that Haller was, in fact, his father, and found the man's address in the roll of registered voters. He visited Haller at his Beverly Hills residence, and discovered that Haller was in the final stage of cancer. He assured the man that he had "made it by okay" in life, and also learned that he had a half-brother. Haller also told Bosch that he had worried about him, but that he couldn't do anything more than he did because it was "different times." Two weeks later, Bosch attended Haller's funeral at Forest Lawn, and spotted his half-brother and three half-sisters, whom he did not approach. He decided he will probably never get to know his half-brother.
Early Career with Los Angeles Police Department[]
Bosch joined the LAPD in August of 1972, after reading Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf, and was assigned badge #2997. Haller had mentioned the book during their brief meeting, because Harry would have shared the protagonist's name – Harry Haller – had he taken his father's surname.
He was a patrol cop for about five years, primarily in the Hollywood and Wilshire divisions but also in Newton division. His partner and first training officer was a cop named Pepin (first name not known). They walked a beat together around Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea. On his second day on the job he responded to a woman (and her dog) found drowned in her bathtub, with her hands and feet bound with dog leashes. The killer had left a palm print on the wall above the toilet, and this led to his identification 30 years later, after Bosch had become a homicide detective. When they went to arrest the suspect, he committed suicide.
He first met medical examiner Jesus Salazar and forensics technician Barbara Starkey as a beat cop in the aftermath of the Symbionese Liberation Army shootout in mid-May of 1974. In 1977, he took his detective's test and passed, graduating to the robbery table with the Van Nuys Division and then the homicide table in North Hollywood. For two years he was partnered with veteran detective John Jack Thompson who taught Harry a great deal. By 1982, he had worked his way into the prestigious Robbery-Homicide Division (R-HD) of the LAPD at Parker Center, where he worked for eight years alongside Frankie Sheehan. Their boss at that time was Capt. John Garwood. Bosch's advancement from patrol to detectives to R-HD in only eight years is considered very rapid. While in R-HD he investigated a series of murders by The Beauty Shop Slasher. His partner at the time is known only as Anderson. After the two detectives solved the case, L.A. Times crime reporter Joel Bremmer wrote a book about them which was made into a TV miniseries and for which both Bosch and Anderson were paid. In the miniseries, the role of Bosch was played by Dan Lacey.
In 1982, Harry saw a live reading by poet John Harvey at a restaurant in Venice Beach, and purchased a hand-written copy of Harvey's poem "Chet Baker." He framed the poem and it hangs in his home. The same year he saw Baker play at a club in San Francisco. He played one of Harry's favorite trumpet pieces, Night Bird. When the chokehold was banned from Department use, Harry was assigned to a task force investigating deaths that had resulted from improper use of the technique, at which time he met Deputy Chief Irvin Irving, commander of the task force, for the first time. Bosch's assignment was to oversee the autopsy part of the investigation.
In 1989, Harry checked out case-file #61-743 – the unsolved murder of his mother – from the LAPD storage facility on Ramirez Street. Later that year, he and Sheehan investigated the murder of an unidentified 15-year-old girl. Against Sheehan's wishes, Bosch submitted a profile to the FBI, and met Special Agent Terry McCaleb, with whom he discerned the identity of the girl's killer and rescued another potential victim. At that time, McCaleb classified Bosch as a Man on a Mission and an Avenging Angel, meaning that he viewed his work as a personal quest and he personally identified with the victims.
On 9 September 1989, he shot and killed Norman Church, who he believed to be the perpetrator of the Dollmaker murders. He was initially cleared in the shooting but later disciplined for not following procedures and subsequently served a 22-day suspension in Mexico. Upon his return to work, he was demoted to the "sewer" of the Hollywood Homicide Division on Wilcox Avenue.
Transfer to Hollywood[]
At 8:53 a.m. on Sunday, 20 May 1990[3], Bosch received a call from Sgt. Crowley about a dead body in a pipe near the Hollywood Reservoir. Bosch and his partner Jerry Edgar investigated the murder and determined that the victim was Billy Meadows, a man he had known in Viet Nam. A young transient named Sharkey was the witness who had anonymously called to report the body. Soon Sharkey was killed. The case led Bosch to become involved in an FBI investigation into an unsolved break-in at the WestLand National Bank, for which Meadows had been a suspect. For a time Bosch was also considered a suspect due to his association with Meadows, and he was under surveillance by IAD detectives Lewis and Clarke. During the investigation, he began a relationship with FBI agent Eleanor Wish, though the two were unable to remain a couple at that time. Bosch uncovered the connection between Meadows, John Rourke, and Wish's brother in Viet Nam. In the course of solving the case, Bosch also uncovered Wish's involvement in the bank robbery and murder of Meadows. Bosch was shot and nearly killed by Rourke in the storm drains under Beverly Hills Safe & Lock. He recovered and spent six weeks in San Felipe, Mexico before returning to the Hollywood Homicide beat.
On 5 March 1991, Bosch and his fellow detectives first saw the Holliday video of the Rodney King beating on L.A. television Channel 5. He later described it as the defining moment for him as a cop and for the LAPD. Four months later rioting erupted in L.A when the cops who beat King were all acquitted. There were so many killings in South-Central that detectives from other divisions were called to help out. On the night of 1 May 1992 Bosch and Edgar responded to a body found in an alley off Crenshaw Boulevard. It was a white female shot once in the head at close range. She carried an LAPD press pass indicating that her name was Anneke Jesperson. The detectives had less than an hour to search the site, but Bosch managed to find a single Remington 9 mm brass casing. They were unable to clear the case at that time.
On 25 December 1991, Bosch overheard a call on his police radio and became involved in the investigation into the death of Hollywood Narcotics detective Calexico Moore. At that time, Lt. Pounds also assigned Bosch the eight open cases left behind by Hollywood Homicide detective Lucius Porter when Porter quit the force, in the hopes that he could clear at least one in order to give the Hollywood Division a 33-for-66 homicide record for the year. He focused on an unidentified man referred to as "Juan Doe #67" who was beaten to death and left behind a diner. He discovered that the man had been found by detective Moore the day before Moore's death. This, combined with the fact that Moore was under investigation by IAD, made Moore's death appear suspicious to Bosch, but Irvin Irving preferred to call it suicide because that would be more acceptable than admitting to another corrupt cop on the force.
At that time, Bosch had been involved with medical examiner Teresa Corazón, and he exploited his relationship with her to get details on Moore's autopsy. A key item was that Moore had been hit on the back of the head before he was shot, leading Corazón to conclude that it was not suicide. Irving called the autopsy results "inconclusive." Bosch then leaked information to the Los Angeles Times to counter Irving's coverup. Angered at being used by Bosch, Corazón ended their personal relationship. Bosch then became involved with the dead detective's ex-wife, Sylvia Moore.
Continuing to investigate Moore's death and its connections to the deaths of "Juan Doe #67" and a drug dealer, it became apparent that Moore was involved in the drug trade. Bosch ultimately discovered that a drug lord named Humberto Zorillo from Mexicali was a half brother to Moore and that Moore was overseeing the cartel's operations in L.A. Bosch went to Mexicali where he found the shipping point for the drug Black Ice. It was being manufactured on Zorillo's ranch and transported by tunnels to apparently normal businesses which then shipped it to the U.S. The DEA raided the ranch but did not capture Zorillo. After considering all the evidence, Bosch came to the realization that the body identified as Moore was actually Zorillo. Moore had killed Zorillo and taken his place in running the Black Ice operation in Mexicali. Bosch tracked down Moore in Mexicali and killed him.
In 1993 Bosch and Edgar were assigned to investigate the disappearance and suspected murder of Marie Gesto. Her maroon '87 Honda Accord was found in the garage of a vacant apartment in the neighborhood behind Hollywood Bowl, but her body was not found at that time. Bosch noted that he had lived on Camrose Drive in this neighborhood when he was a child. The prime suspect was Anthony Garland. Bosch felt certain that Garland was guilty but he had no evidence - no DNA, no fingerprints, no leads, no witnesses, and no body. He questioned Garland several times over the ensuing years but was not able to make any headway. The case remained open until 2006.
Bosch continued his relationship with Sylvia Moore for nearly a year, and she supported him through the wrongful death trial that Deborah Church brought against him and the city in November of 1993. The Church family was represented by Honey Chandler. At that time, another victim turned up, along with a note in the Dollmaker's distinctive style, casting additional doubt on whether Bosch had killed the right man. This new victim had been killed after Norman Church's death, meaning that there was another killer, a Follower. As the trial proceeded, Bosch participated on the task force to find the Follower. On the day the jury delivered its verdict, Bosch learned that Honey Chandler had been tortured and murdered. He realized that Joel Bremmer, his longtime friend at the L.A. Times, was the Follower. He confronted Bremmer and arrested him.
During this time his relationship with Moore became strained by the secrets that she knew that Bosch was keeping from her. One was the murder of his mother, which Moore learned of when she attended court on the day that Bosch gave his own testimony. Moore eventually told Bosch that she needed time to decide whether to continue seeing him.
Moore chose to continue her relationship with Bosch, but they lasted as a couple for only another two months. In January of 1994, shortly after the Northridge earthquake destroyed Grant High School and severely damaged Bosch's cantilevered house in the Hollywood Hills, Moore took a sabbatical and left the city, ending the relationship. Bosch tried to repair his house by himself but it was later demolished by the city, and Bosch lived in the Mark Twain Hotel while he rebuilt his house. Shortly after that, Bosch and Edgar investigated the death of a prostitute who they believed to have been murdered by her last client.
The detectives escorted the man to the Hollywood Police Station as a witness intending to trip him up on details, but before they could begin, Lt. Harvey Pounds advised the man of his rights, causing him to request a lawyer and ruining the detectives' chance at finessing a confession. The man was subsequently released due to lack of evidence, and Bosch confronted Pounds. The two argued heatedly, until Bosch seized his commanding officer and threw the lieutenant face-first through a plate-glass window of his office.
Involuntary Stress Leave[]
Instead of termination or suspension for his assault on Pounds, Bosch was placed on Involuntary Stress Leave by Deputy Chief Irvin Irving, and was ordered to see police psychologist Dr. Carmen Hinojos three times a week. At one of these sessions she asked him what his mission was. He told her that it was to find his mother's killer, and he set out to do that. He once again checked out his mother's murder book. He had checked it out once before, five years earlier when he received a postcard from his mother's friend Meredith Roman, but at that time he wasn't ready to work on it. He retraced the investigation, starting with Johnny Fox. He posed as Harvey Pounds several times to disguise his identity. In one such case he crashed a party at the home of Gordon Mittel. He then flew to Venice, Florida to meet with Jake McKittrick who was one of the investigators on his mother's case in 1961.
Upon returning to Los Angeles, Bosch learned that Lt. Pounds had been tortured and murdered, and Bosch was IAD's prime suspect. He was subsequently cleared of involvement because of his valid alibi. He continued his investigation into Mittel and Arno Conklin, and their connections to Johnny Fox. He ultimately learned that Roman was the murderer of his mother.
Return to the Department[]
In January of 1995, Bosch returned to active duty after 18 months. He first went to the Hollywood Division's burglary under detective bureau commander Lt. Grace Billets. He worked there for eight months before being promoted back to the homicide table, where he was reteamed with Jerry Edgar and Pacific Division transfer Kizmin Rider. At this time Bosch got his first cellular phone. Prior to this Bosch and other detectives used pay phones extensively, which cost 25 cents per call. He also acquired a digital fingerprint device.
In September of 1995, Edgar, Rider, and Bosch investigated the murder of Anthony Aliso, a low-end film producer who was found shot to death in the trunk of his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud on a bluff overlooking the Hollywood Bowl. The investigation brought Bosch and his team into conflict with the LAPD's Organized Crime Intelligence Division (OCID) before leading them to Las Vegas where they became embroiled in an FBI operation. Bosch initially believed that the Aliso case centered on Joey Marks. After learning that Marks was not involved in Aliso's murder, he realized that the case revolved around Aliso's wife, Veronica. While in Las Vegas, Bosch reconnected with Eleanor Wish, now a professional poker player. Because Wish was a convicted felon, Bosch once more came under investigation by IAD. The two married on June 13, 1996, making the IAD case moot. They took their honeymoon on Maui where they coincidentally saw Gretchen Alexander. Bosch was also disciplined for freelancing and not following procedures in his arrest of Ray Powers, along with Edgar and Rider.
In the process of investigating the Aliso case, Bosch and his team obtained surveillance video from Archway Studios showing a man breaking into Aliso's office. That man was Dominic Carbone of OCID who had planted an illegal bug in Aliso's phone and was retrieving it before it could be discovered by LAPD. Bosch obtained copies of the video which he later delivered to the Chief of Police, implicating Carbone and his boss, Deputy Chief Leon Fitzgerald.
In late 1996, Bosch investigated the murder of a teenage girl in Hollywood, and discovered similarities to a case being investigated by Jaye Winston in West Hollywood. Together, the two traced the histories of the victims, and realized that both had used the same dry-cleaning service. Bosch and Winston interviewed the manager of the dry-cleaning business, and Bosch quickly deduced that the man himself was responsible, and he and Winston managed to rescue a potential third victim from a locked freezer in the man's garage.
On 28 February 1997, Bosch and Edgar arrived at the Bank of America branch on Laurel Canyon Boulevard during the final minutes of the North Hollywood shootout. Bosch was put in charge of collecting evidence from the robber's car.
In 1998 Bosch and Edgar solved a murder known as the Hardboiled Egg Case.
In April of 1999, Bosch was contacted directly by Deputy Chief Irving and instructed to assemble his team and report to the Angels Flight funicular railway in the Bunker Hill district, where housekeeper Catalina Perez and notorious civil rights attorney Howard Elias had been murdered. Bosch's team was assigned to work with a squad of Internal Affairs detectives including John Chastain, who had twice previously tried to strip Bosch of his badge. The FBI was also called in to assist, notably Gilbert Spencer and Roy Lindell. The investigation took Bosch and his team through the civil case of Michael Harris, which Elias had been two days from taking to court, in which 15 members of RHD would be sued for brutality against Harris after Harris alleged that he was tortured by detectives for three days in an effort to coerce him into confessing to the murder of Stacey Kincaid. Bosch subsequently reopened the investigation into Kincaid's murder, retracing Elias's own private investigation and clearing Harris by discovering the girl's killer. Bosch determined that Chastain had killed both Elias and Frankie Sheehan. Carla Entrenkin played a key role in the case, as well as Janis Langwiser.
Almost every aspect of the Elias/Kincaid case was distorted and covered up by Assistant Chief Irving. The most egregious cover up was the allegation that Frankie Sheehan had killed Elias. Bosch was in a position to strategically leak information to the press to expose the cover ups as he had done in similar situations in the past. However, this time there is no indication that he took any steps to reveal the truth even though his silence may have deprived Sheehan's widow of her husband's pension.
At the time of the Elias/Perez murders, Eleanor Wish was living with Bosch, and he was very content with the situation. However she moved back to Las Vegas in the middle of the case, leaving Bosch with very mixed feelings. What he did not know at the time was that Eleanor was pregnant.
On 16 May 1999, Bosch and Rider investigated the murder of Eidolon production assistant Angella Benton. Several days later, while on a movie set interviewing the director of the film that Benton had been working on, Bosch became involved in a shootout with four men who robbed the set and stole two million dollars in cash that was intended to serve as a prop in the movie. In the shootout, one security guard was killed and a bank assistant was injured. Bosch got off some shots, one of which hit a robber, but all four escaped. After the robbery, the investigation into the Benton murder was reassigned to Lawton Cross and Jack Dorsey of the Robbery-Homicide Division. Then, ten months into the investigation, FBI crime analyst Martha Gessler disappeared. The case went cold, but Bosch was haunted by the look of Benton's hands in her death pose.
In 2000, Bosch, Edgar and Rider closed the case of white supremacist Michael Allen Smith. In October of 2000, Bosch, Edgar and Rider were called to Nichols Canyon Road in the Hollywood Hills to investigate the death of Jody Krementz. While the actress appeared to have died as a result of autoerotic asphyxia, Bosch determined that she had in fact, been murdered and her death was later staged to appear accidental. His investigation led him to film director David Storey, who was arrested later in the week and charged with Krementz's murder.
Storey stood trial in January of 2001, and Bosch joined district attorneys Roger Kretzler and Janis Langwiser in prosecuting the case. He was later approached by Terry McCaleb, who had since retired from the FBI, and New Times journalist Jack McEvoy, and deduced that he was being treated as a suspect in the murder of Edward Gunn, who had been found dead on New Years Day in a manner that McCaleb had linked to the artwork of Bosch's namesake. After McCaleb was ousted from the Gunn investigation, Bosch implored the profiler to re-examine the case with an eye toward clearing Bosch. The two determined that Gunn's death was, in fact, connected with the Storey trial because individuals associated with the defense had committed the murder with the intention of framing Bosch in order to destroy his credibility as a witness.
In October of 2001, he had a wisdom tooth removed, and received a prescription for Vicodin.
On 1 January 2002, Bosch was called out to the deaths of a 34-year-old actress and an elderly resident of the Splendid Age Retirement Home, both of which he determined to be suicides. While finishing up those cases, he received a call from Sgt. Mankiewicz directing him to Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon, where the arm bone of a child had been discovered. At the scene he met Julia Brasher and they began a short-lived affair. At one point Bosch told her that she exhibited a pattern of impulsive, even reckless decision-making. This profile is very similar to Bosch's ex-wife, Eleanor Wish, and it tells us something about Bosch's attraction to certain women. The arm bone case was investigated by Bosch and Edgar. In the course of the investigation more bones were found and they determine that it was a homicide case. The victim was identified as Arthur Delacroix. They interview the victim's mother (Christine Dorsett Waters), his father (Samuel Delacroix), his sister (Sheila Delacroix), a neighbor (Nicholas Trent), and a former acquaintance of the victim (Johnny Stokes). After many false leads, Bosch determined that Stokes was the killer. However, in the process Brasher was killed by a self-inflicted gunshot.[4]
Bosch thought that he might be forced into retirement after this case. However, on 12 January 2002, Bosch was promoted from the Hollywood Division back to the city's elite Robbery-Homicide Unit by Deputy Chief Irving. An opening had been created by the resignation of Rick Thornton, and Irving said this would allow him to keep a closer eye on Bosch. On the evening of January 14th, however, Harry tendered his resignation by locking his badge, ID, and service sidearm in his desk and leaving the key on Lt. Billets's desk. Three days later, Capt. LeValley called him and asked him to reconsider. He declined. The deaths of Delacroix, Trent, Brasher and Stokes took a heavy emotional toll on Bosch.
First Retirement and Private Investigation[]
In March of 2002, after retiring from LAPD, Bosch applied for and received his private investigator's license. He had no intention of working as a P.I. but could not give up on some of the department's unsolved cases. He said at that time, "My job in this world, badge or no badge, was to stand for the dead." FBI agent Roy Lindell said of Bosch, "He's always been a private investigator, even when he carried a badge." Since Bosch no longer had a police vehicle to drive, he bought a used, black Mercedes-Benz ML55. He now has a cell phone but doesn't have email. He tried once to use a computer in the LA Central Library but didn't know how to do anything.
In October of 2002, he was contacted by former RHD detective Lawton Cross, who mentioned the unsolved murder of Angella Benton in 1999. Bosch retrieved his own files from the case, and arranged a meeting with Benton's former employer, producer Alexander Taylor. Later in the day, he was visited by Kiz Rider on behalf of the interim Chief of Police and instructed to stop his personal investigation into Benton's death. She told him, "These people, they don't fuck around" but did not specify who she was referring to. This caused tension between Bosch and Rider, although they later reconciled and remained friends. Still, Bosch ignored Rider's warning and pursued a connection between the Benton murder, the movie money heist, and the disappearance of a FBI crime analyst, Martha Gessler.
Bosch met again with agent Roy Lindell who unofficially requested that Bosch look into the disappearance of Gessler, but Bosch's investigation brought him into conflict with the Los Angeles office of the Department of Homeland Security. Bosch was later detained overnight by DHS agents and questioned by Special Agent John Peoples before being released. He planted a spycam in Lawton Cross' home and obtained video evidence that DHS agents had brutally interrogated Cross as well.
Bosch traded copies of that evidence to Peoples for the case files on Benton's murder and the movie set robbery, and pursued leads back to the bank that lent the money to the film production. After interviewing the employees involved in the transaction, Bosch located the man responsible for both Benton's murder and the film set robbery, confronting him at his new place of business. The man and three associates (Oliphant, Banks and Fazio) then tailed Bosch back to his home in the Hollywood Hills, leading to a wild shootout that resulted in the deaths of a federal agent and three of the men, as well as leaving the last man in a coma. In the aftermath Bosch realized that officers Cross and Dorsey had killed Gessler, and he got Cross to confess to him. Bosch and Lindell find Gessler's shallow grave.
During the Simonson case, Bosch traveled to Las Vegas three times to visit his ex-wife, Eleanor. The first time he found her to be somewhat mysterious and he sensed there was something she wasn't telling him. The second visit they spent the night at the Bellagio. The third visit was after the end of the case. Wish then introduced him to his daughter, Madeline, who was almost four years old. He had never known Eleanor was pregnant. He began visiting Las Vegas regularly to see his daughter, although relations with his ex-wife were strained.
In April of 2004, Bosch traveled to Catalina Island to attend the funeral of Terry McCaleb. Later in the month, he was approached by Terry's widow, who hired Bosch to look into Terry's alleged heart attack because inconsistencies in his autopsy indicated that someone may have tampered with his medications. Bosch interviewed Buddy Lockridge, then spent the night aboard The Following Sea reviewing McCaleb's case files where he found McCaleb's notes on the connections between six men who had gone missing in Nevada. Bosch also found photographs on McCaleb's computer indicating that someone had been stalking Graciela and Terry's children, as well as pictures of the Zzyzx Road exit and a beached boat in the Mojave Desert.
Bosch then traveled to the Zzyzx Road site, where he found a federal excavation team and was detained by FBI agents including Rachel Walling. She was convinced that the victims and burial site were the work of Robert Backus. With Walling's help Bosch discovered Backus' hideout in Clear, NV, but he was not there. Bosch found a partially burned book from Book Carnival. He believed that Backus' next target would be the owner of the bookstore. Bosch and Walling found Backus at a home in Canoga Park. Bosch and Backus struggled, and both fell into the rain-swollen L.A. River. Walling attempted to pull Bosch out of the river using jumper cables, but he was swept away. Bosch then used the jumper cables to strangle and drown Backus. Bosch was rescued by helicopter.
While working on the Zzyzx case, Bosch was able to visit his daughter several times, though it sometimes resulted in an argument with Eleanor about where their daughter should be raised. While in Las Vegas he stayed at the Executive Extended Stay Motel because it was cheap. While working on the Zzyzx case the room next door to him was occupied by Cassie Black using a different name. During the case, Kiz Rider and Tim Marcia both called Bosch to tell him he could come back to the LAPD, and they urged him to do so. They mentioned the newly-formed Open-Unsolved Unit as a good fit for Harry.
Open-Unsolved Unit[]
In 2005, Bosch returned to the LAPD within the terms of Police Chief William Bratton's program allowing officers to return to the Department within three years of retirement without having to reattend the Police Academy. Chief Bratton personally welcomed Bosch back to the force. At the time of Bosch's return, Parker Center was still the headquarters of the LAPD but slated for replacement. More importantly, the LAPD was working under a consent decree that meant it was under the thumb of the federal Dept. of Justice.
Bosch was assigned to the Open-Unsolved Unit of the Robbery-Homicide Division in room 503 of Parker Center, along with Kizmin Rider, who transferred from the Chief's office to the cold-case unit to work with Bosch again. Their supervisor was Lt. Abel Pratt. O-U work is very different from regular homicide investigation. There is no call-out to a murder that has just occurred. Instead, the detectives comb through old files looking for evidence. Nowadays it is all about the DNA, but sometimes fingerprints can also lead to an arrest.
The pair's first case involved the reinvestigation of the 1988 shooting death of Rebecca Verloren after a cold hit matched DNA from the murder weapon to white supremacist Roland Mackey. The case had initially been investigated by detectives Green and Garcia, but their work was manipulated by Irvin Irving who, at that time, was heading up the Public Disorder Unit. Bosch realized that this case has high jingo on it.
Bosch noted that the racial aspect of the case had not been adequately investigated. The racial element plus the DNA evidence led Bosch and Rider to tap Mackey's phones and then plant a story in the Daily News about reopening the case. This led to the murder of Mackey by Verloren's real killer. The case was solved when Bosch discovered that the killer had hidden under the victim's bed. His fingerprints were found there, 17 years later, leading to his arrest.
Later that year, Bosch traveled to Boston in pursuit of Edward Paisley while investigating the 1990 murder of Letitia Williams.
In early 2006 he went to Hong Kong to visit his daughter Maddie who was then in third grade. In September of 2006, Bosch and Rider arrested Victor Matarese for the 1996 murder of a prostitute, and elicited a confession for three additional murders in South Florida. The following week, the two were contacted by deputy district attorney Rick O'Shea and detective Fred Olivas to inform them that captured serial killer Raynard Waits intended to confess to the 1993 murder of Marie Gesto and nine other victims. Gesto was a case that Bosch had investigated with Jerry Edgar thirteen years earlier. Bosch did not like the proffered deal and was not convinced that Waits was the real killer. He still liked Anthony Garland for the Gesto murder. He contacted Rachel Walling for help in profiling. She informed Bosch of the hidden meaning behind Waits's name, which only increased Bosch's discomfort with the deal. Bosch and Walling continued to work the case together, and they renewed the sexual relationship they had a few years before.
O'Shea went ahead with a field trip to have Waits show the location of Gesto's grave in Beachwood Canyon. Waits managed to wrestle a gun away from Olivas, shooting and killing him and a sheriff's deputy, and shooting detective Kizmin Rider in the throat. Waits fled to his former foster home in Echo Park where he had been renting the garage from Janet Saxon. Inside the garage he had constructed a subterranean chamber where he would hide his living victims, rape and kill them, and then bury them.
After the shooting in Beachwood Canyon, Bosch was taken off the case until he was cleared by OIS. Bosch and Walling continued to work on the case, uncovering Waits's true identity through County records. They traced him to the Echo Park location where he was holding a new victim, still alive. [Note: Bosch lived in the Sir Palmer Apartments in Echo Park as a child]. Bosch cornered Waits/Foxworth in this lair, then shot and killed him. He was still bothered by the idea that Waits/Foxworth had not killed Gesto but someone had convinced him to confess. Evidence started to point to his own boss, Abel Pratt who had conspired with the Garlands in return for cash. Bosch brought the FBI back into the case, and they set up a sting to get a confession out of Anthony Garland by having Pratt demand more money. Garland shot and killed Pratt and then was shot and killed by FBI agents. At the conclusion of that case, Walling told Bosch that she could not stay in a relationship with him because of his tendency to put himself and others at risk by not following standard procedure. Bosch would say later that the case "went sideways", glossing over the fact that his own actions were part of the reason.
While the Waits case was going on, there was considerable political activity in L.A. Bosch generally tries to stay out of politics, but in this case he was backing Martin Maizel against Irvin Irving. Manziel did not have the best reputation, but Bosch could not bear the idea of Irving having that much power, which he would undoubtedly use to punish the LAPD. Irving won the election.
Robbery-Homicide Division[]
In early 2007, Bosch was transferred to the Homicide Special Section of the Robbery-Homicide Division, where he was partnered with Ignacio Ferras. Their supervisor was Larry Gandle. In March of that year, Bosch and Ferras were called to an overlook on Mulholland Drive to investigate the murder of Dr. Stanley Kent. This was the first case that Bosch and Ferras worked as partners, and it was a rough one for Ferras. Bosch encountered FBI agent Rachel Walling on the scene, leading to some tension due to their recent breakup and the fact that her presence signaled a federal involvement. Walling's partner, Jack Brenner, met them at the Kent home where they had found Alicia Kent naked and hog-tied. Bosch noted a discoloration on the wall of the workout room and paper towels stained with grape juice in the trash, but he did not know what these meant.
They learned that Dr. Kent had access to medical cesium which could be used to make a "dirty" bomb. The case initially appeared to be terrorism-related with a group coercing Dr. Kent to provide them with radioactive cesium, then killing him. Bosch did not subscribe to the terrorism theory and clashed with the FBI in his usual fashion. He went as far as jumping the chain of command to talk directly with the Chief about his concerns. When Alicia Kent's car was found near the home of Ramin Samir, and Capt. Don Hadley called for a no-knock search warrant resulting in the death of Samir, Bosch became more convinced that the terrorism angle was misdirection.
The case broke wide open when a man was brought to Queen of Angels Hospital emergency room with Acute Radiation Syndrome. Bosch and Walling found that the man had retrieved the missing cesium from a dumpster. In the man's vehicle they also found the murder weapon, the Kent's camera, and a yoga poster from the Kent's home. Bosch realized that theft of the cesium was merely cover for the real motive - a love affair between Alicia Kent and FBI agent Clifford Maxwell. Bosch, Ferras and Walling attempted to apprehend Maxwell who had already killed Alicia to cover his tracks. Ferras shot and severely wounded Maxwell. Ferras was less seriously wounded by Maxwell. Bosch and Walling pursued Maxwell to a butcher shop in Grand Central Market where Maxwell shot himself fatally.
Also in 2007 Bosch was assigned to investigate the murder of defense attorney Jerry Vincent. There were a couple of perplexing things about this case. One was that there was a federal involvement, but the reason for this was unclear. The other was that it seemed to be connected in some way with the murder trial of Walter Elliot. Vincent was originally representing Elliot, but Mickey Haller took over after Vincent's death. Bosch learned from the FBI that they were looking into possible jury fraud involving Vincent and others because Vincent had paid a large bribe to someone. Bosch and the FBI were watching Haller when Vincent's killer attempted to kill Haller. They stopped the attempted murder, then made a deal with the assailant to testify against his co-conspirators. At the end of the case Bosch and Haller discussed the fact that they are half brothers.
On 8 September 2009, Bosch and Ferras were sent to Fortune Liquors on S. Normandie Ave. to investigate the shooting death of John Li. Bosch realized that Li was the same man he had encountered at the store during the riot that followed the murder of Howard Elias in April of 1999, and discovered through surveillance footage that Li had been making regular payments to triad collector Bo-Jing Chang. Bosch approached Asian Crimes Unit detective David Chu in order to set up surveillance on Chang, and Bosch and Chu arrested him on September 11th at LAX as he attempted to flee the state to Seattle.
While Chang waited in custody over the weekend, Bosch received a threatening phone call at the station telling him to back off the case, and soon after received a short video on his cellphone showing his daughter kidnapped in Hong Kong. Bosch assumed that the abduction of his daughter was connected with his arrest of Chang. He contacted Eleanor Wish and arranged for her to meet him at the airport in Hong Kong, then headed to Chang's apartment and broke in to search the residence. Finding nothing useful, Bosch headed to LAX and flew to Hong Kong, where he met Wish and her bodyguard Sun Yee on the morning of September 13th. The three traveled to Victoria Peak to triangulate the neighborhood where they believed Madeline was being held. Bosch said he needed a gun, and Yee obtained one for him.
Bosch then traveled with Wish and Yee to Kowloon where they managed to identify the building where the cellphone video was shot, the Chungking Mansions. Bosch and Wish headed to room 1514 but found the room from the video empty; as they attempted to leave, they were attacked by two unidentified men who Bosch managed to kill, though Wish was killed during the shootout. Bosch assumed the two men were part of the Triad that had kidnapped Maddie, but Yee explained that they were not Triad and not even Chinese. Bosch took a gun from one of the assailants and then went down to the lobby to savagely beat the hotel clerk in order to get the registration records. Bosch and Yee fled the scene. The registration records showed that room 1514 had been rented by Peng Qingcai on the day of Madeline's kidnapping, and his home address was listed. They headed to Qingcai's house and found Peng, his sister, and his mother all murdered in their bathroom. Bosch also discovered the memory chip from his daughter's cellphone hidden in the kitchen.
Inserting the chip into his own phone, Bosch found an unknown phone number labeled only Tuen Mun, and called Chu in Los Angeles to trace the number. While Chu used his contacts in the Hong Kong Police Force to run down the number, Bosch and Yee sent a text message to the number requesting a meeting because of "a problem with the girl," and quickly arranged to meet at Geo at the Gold Coast. At the restaurant, Bosch identified the target when he saw a woman and a boy leaving the building at the same time that Yee sent a follow-up text calling off the meeting.
Bosch and Yee followed the woman to a white Mercedes being driven by an unidentified man, and they followed the Mercedes until Bosch received a call from Chu informing him that the cellphone number was traced to Northstar Seafood & Shipping. Bosch and Yee broke off their pursuit of the Mercedes and drove to the deserted shipyard where they found a cargo ship being monitored by guards. The boat was outfitted for human trafficking. Moments later the white Mercedes arrived, and the unidentified man boarded the ship. Convinced that Madeline was inside, Bosch surreptitiously boarded the ship and killed two guards before being locked in a holding cell below deck by Ho. He managed to shoot and kill Ho, and was soon rescued himself by Yee. The two hurried to Ho's car, finding Madeline blindfolded and gagged in the locked trunk. Yee drove them to the airport. Harry was concerned about Yee's safety, but he assured Harry that he would handle the aftermath in Hong Kong.
Bosch and Madeline flew back to Los Angeles, and Bosch arranged the guest bedroom at his house for his daughter. The next day, Bosch dropped Madeline off at the middle school at the bottom of Woodrow Wilson Drive so that he could continue his investigation. He encountered Chang being released from police custody which enraged him. At this time Harry still believed that the kidnapping of his daughter was connected with the murder of John Li and the Triad in Monterey Park. He then contacted Carmen Hinojos to set up a time for Madeline to meet with the psychiatrist.
Later in the week, Bosch received a call from his supervisor informing him that investigators Alfred Lo and Clifford Wu from the Hong Kong Police Force's Triad Bureau wanted to question him regarding the September 13th deaths in Kowloon. Bosch contacted his half-brother Mickey Haller for legal counsel during the interview. Bosch gave Lo and Wu what information he could without incriminating himself or Yee in any crimes, and Haller managed to dissuade the HKPF investigators from pursuing Bosch as a suspect. Bosch offered to pay Haller who declined and suggested that they get their two daughters together instead. Bosch was initially reluctant.
Bosch then received a call from Ballistics technician Teri Sopp informing him that she had used electrostatic enhancement to raise a fingerprint from the bullet casing removed from Li's throat. The print matched Henry Lau, and Bosch and Chu visited the screenwriter, discovering that he owned a Glock pistol that matched the slugs that killed Li.
Lau produced an alibi, however, having been in a production meeting for a film for which he had written the screenplay, and Bosch and Chu discovered that Lau attended USC with Li's son Robert and Robert's friend Eugene Lam. Li, Lau, and Lam played regular poker games at Lau's waterfront home, and both of them knew that he owned the Glock and where he kept the key. Bosch then arrested Lam and questioned him, offering to make a deal in exchange for Lam's testimony against Robert Li. Lam agreed and also admitted that he was the one who made the threatening phone call to Bosch. As Bosch and Gandle were preparing to go the Sherman Oaks and arrest Robert Li, they learned that Ferras, who was watching Robert Li, intended to arrest Li by himself. When Ferras attempted to arrest Li, he was shot and killed by Li's sister, Mia, who then turned the gun on herself.
Bosch attended the funerals of both Ferras and Wish in the following week. He later learned from Madeline that she had fabricated her initial kidnapping and video with Peng and He Qingcai in order to persuade Bosch to take her away from Hong Kong to live in Los Angeles. Peng, however, betrayed her and sold her to Ho, who then killed Peng and his family. Bo-Jing Chang had nothing to do with the kidnapping of his daughter.
In February of 2010, David Chu transferred from the Asian Gang Unit to Homicide Special and was partnered with Bosch. They were assigned to work with Haller and Haller's ex-wife Margaret McPherson on the retrial of Jason Jessup, who had been released in January after 24 years in prison when DNA evidence showed that a biological stain on the victim's clothing had not come from Jessup. Bosch traced the victim's sister, who had identified Jessup in 1986 as her sister's kidnapper, to Port Townsend in Washington. Bosch and McPherson traveled there to meet her and convinced her to testify against Jessup.
When Jessup was released prior to trial, he was followed and observed by LAPD's Special Investigation Section (SIS), with daily reports to Bosch. One night SIS observed Jessup receiving something, possibly a gun, from another ex-con. They could have (and probably should have) arrested Jessup and that point, the prosecution team decided to wait to see what Jessup would do next. On another night Bosch observed Jessup going into the storage area underneath the Santa Monica Pier. Bosch went in and discovered that Jessup was outfitting it as a hideout.
At trial the prosecution was concerned that a defense witness might undermine the testimony of the victim's sister. Bosch found a prostitute who was familiar with the defense witness, and he brought her to the courtroom as a "silent witness." Her presence caused the defense witness to change his testimony which caused the entire defense to implode. After Jessup killed four people he fled to his pier hideout. Bosch watched as SIS attempted to arrest Jessup and then killed him. Bosch suspected that Jessup had other victims, but he was not able to prove that.
On a personal note, this case brought Bosch and Haller closer together. It also provided an opportunity for their two daughters to meet and become friends.
Return to Open-Unsolved[]
In November of 2010, Bosch transferred back to the Open-Unsolved Unit, where he was again partnered with David Chu. In September of 2011, Bosch applied for an extension on his Deferred Retirement Option Plan, requesting the maximum of five more years (nonretroactive) with the Department; he was approved for four years (retroactive), giving him 39 more months with the LAPD and a forced retirement date of December 2014.
On 3 October 2011, Bosch and Chu were assigned to investigate the murder of Lily Price in 1989. A cold hit linked Clayton Pell to the murder although he was only 8 years of age at that time. Lt. Gail Duvall instructed Bosch and Chu to take over the case from detectives Adriana Dolan and Ross Shuler. There was a blood specimen in the file which Dolan and Shuler sent to the regional crime lab. The link to Pell didn't make sense because his age, and Duvall was afraid that there was cross-contamination. At the same time, Bosch received notification from the Chief of Police, via Kiz Rider, instructing Bosch and his partner to take over the investigation into the death of George Irving, son of City Councilman Irvin Irving. Once again it was a case with high jingo on it. The victim was found that morning, dead from a fall from the balcony of room 79 of the Chateau Marmont Hotel in West Hollywood. Detectives Solomon and Glanville initially had the case and called it suicide, and they handed it over to Bosch and Chu, with some complaints. There was no suicide note and his injuries suggested he might have been unconscious when he hit the ground. From that point on, Bosch worked both cases simultaneously.
In the Lily Price case he discovered how blood from Pell was transferred to the victim. In 1989 Pell and his mother were living with a man known only as Johnny (or Chill) who regularly beat Pell with a belt and also sexually abused him. Bosch quickly developed a theory that Johnny had beaten Pell, getting blood on the belt, then shortly thereafter had used the same belt to strangle Price. The link to Pell brought Bosch into contact with Hannah Stone, a psychologist at Pell's halfway house. The were attracted to each other and began a romantic relationship. However, Bosch had misgivings at times because of her obsession with the question of evil, specifically in relation to her son. He realized that he is attracted to women who have a hidden sorrow.
With Pell's help, Bosch and Chu were able to locate the man known as Chill - Chilton Hardy Jr. The detectives found that Hardy had killed his father, moved into his father's condo in Los Alamitos, and assumed the identity of his father. Bosch threatened to shoot Hardy unless he talked. The killer revealed to Bosch that the condo next door was where he kept his stash. While Chu worked on getting a warrant, Bosch went into the condo and found massive evidence of serial murders. Hardy was arrested and taken to central jail. The next day when Hardy was being taken by bus to the court house for arraignment, Clayton Pell was on the same bus and attempted to kill Hardy. Bosch and Chu stopped the bus and intervened, saving Hardy's life. Afterwards Harry wondered why he had bothered.
In the Irving case, discussion with Irving's office manager revealed that he had been representing Regent Taxi that was trying to take the Hollywood franchise away from Black & White Taxi. The latter company had numerous blemishes on its record including an accident, DUI's and other moving violations. Bosch noted that all of the arrest reports on B&W Taxi showed the same arresting officer, Robert Mason, a longtime friend of Irving. Evidence began to mount suggesting that Irving was the victim of a homicide. The autopsy on Irving showed a superficial wound on the back of his right shoulder, which Bosch recognized as an indicator that a chokehold had been used on him. Solomon and Glanville's canvass of the neighborhood found a neighbor who saw someone on the fire escape of the hotel that night.
Bosch began to focus on a former cop, Mark McQuillen, who worked for B&W. Just when they were about to bring McQuillen in for questioning and likely arrest, Bosch got a phone call from Emily Gomez-Gonzmart at the LA Times. She had all the details of the case, and Bosch concluded that the leak had come from his partner. He caught Chu and the reporter talking and told Chu he didn't want him as a partner after they finished these two cases. He also made Chu kill the story about the pending arrest.
After questioning McQuillen, Mason, and Deborah Irving, Bosch came to the realization that George Irving's death was suicide. Working through Chu he got Gomez-Gonzmart to run a new story with the suicide finding. Planting the story was intended to provoke Irvin Irving, and it did. The Coucilmember demanded a meeting with the Chief, Bosch and others. He insisted that some action be taken against Bosch for his mishandling of the case. Bosch defended himself and went on to accuse Irving of inappropriate meddling in the taxi franchise question, further enraging Irving. The Chief took Harry's side, putting Irving on notice that he would be investigating the taxi matter.
Afterwards Bosch saw Irving again. Irving insisted on his innocence in the taxi dispute, and he offered some proof - a citizen complaint that his office had received which started the entire controversy. Initially Bosch dismissed the idea, but after putting the pieces together he concluded that Irving had been set up by the Chief and Kiz in order to hurt him in the coming election. Bosch had been an unwitting pawn in their plan. This was confirmed when Kiz came to Harry's home to request that he slow down the investigation of Hardy's numerous murders until after the election. Bosch decided that Kiz had crossed over a line, and he could not be her friend any longer. On the positive side, Harry's DROP date was extended to the full five years to September 2016, and he gained a renewed sense of his mission in life.
During this investigation, the Grim Sleeper case was mentioned because he kept photos of his victims, similar to Chill. In fact, many aspects of the Chilton Hardy case and other Bosch cases resemble the actual facts of the Grim Sleeper.
In 2012, The Open-Unsolved Unit had a new supervisor, Lt. Cliff O'Toole. Anticipating the 20th anniversary of the 1992 riots, the Police Chief directed the O-U unit to reexamine any outstanding cases from that period. Bosch pulled the casefile of Anneke Jesperson and ran the 9 mm shell casing that he had found in 1992 at the scene of Jesperson's murder. The shell matched a gun used in two other murders, Walter Regis and Eddie Vaughn. He questioned Charles Washburn who said he had found the gun in his back yard in '92 and had given it to gang enforcer Trumont Story. Bosch then went to San Quentin to talk with Rufus Coleman, who had killed Regis, and learned that Coleman had acquired the gun from Story.
While at the prison he also visited Shawn Stone who later filed a complaint with the LAPD about the visit. Lt. O'Toole launched an investigation which was led by Nancy Mendenhall.
By this time Story was already dead, but his former girlfriend was still living in the same house. With the help of Detective Jordy Gant, the girlfriend turned over the murder weapon, a Beretta Model 92. The serial number had been filed off but Peter Sargent was able to raise it. There was no California record for the gun, so Bosch went to Rachel Walling for help. She got Suzanne Wingo to run it through the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. This traced the gun back to a batch that was sold to the Iraqi Republican Guard prior to 1992. These guns were supposed to have been destroyed, but somehow this one ended up in L.A.
Bosch pieced together the theory that men from a California National Guard unit had smuggled the gun into the U.S. after Operation Desert Storm. Jesperson had been there as a journalist. On board a recreation ship, Saudi Princess, she was drugged and gang raped by four men - Francis Dowler, Carl Cosgrove Jr., Reggie Banks, and Chris Henderson. A man named J. J. Drummond helped them cover up the crime, making the other men beholden to him. Afterwards, Jesperson had tracked the men to California and then to L.A. where they were deployed during the 1992 riots and where she was killed. Bosch did not know which man was the killer, but he intended to find out.
One important clue was a 2002 phone message to the LAPD inquiring about the status of the Jesperson case. The phone number indicated it came from Stanislaus County. Telling O'Toole that he wanted to take a week vacation, Bosch traveled there to locate the four men. He observed the Cosgrove estate, then he interrogated Banks and got him to confess everything. However, Drummond had been following Bosch. He took Bosch and Banks to Cosgrove's barn where he cuffed Bosch to a post and killed Banks. Mendenhall had been following Bosch as well, and she helped him escape. Inside Cosgrove's house they found the bodies of Dowler and Cosgrove; they had been killed by Drummond. It all came together for Bosch as he realized that Drummond was the one who had killed Jesperson to maintain his control over the others. As Drummond tried to escape by helicopter, he crashed into a wind turbine and was severely injured.
Bosch wanted to go to Denmark to explain it all in person to Jesperson's brother, but O'Toole wouldn't authorize it. Mendenhall's report cleared Bosch of any wrongdoing. Subsequent investigation found abundant evidence of Drummond's guilt, including Jesperson's journal.
In 2013 Bosch was in court on the case of Patrick Sewell, a suspected serial killer. This was at the same time that Mickey Haller was defending Andre La Cosse. Haller and Bosch saw each other once at this time and they talked about getting their daughters together again. Sewell later stabbed La Cosse seven times, nearly killing him.
In 2014, Bosch, who was at the time the most experienced member of the Open-Unsolved Unit, was partnered with Lucia Soto, the Unit's least experienced member. In November of that year, they were assigned to investigate the death of Orlando Merced, who had recently succumbed to complications of a gunshot wound he had suffered on 10 April 2004. Former Mayor Armando Zeyas offered a reward of $50,000 for information, which resulted in a flood of calls. The first piece of evidence was the bullet, which was a Remington .308 fired from a Kimber Model 84 Montana. The fact that a hunting rifle was used changed the direction of the case. Bosch and Soto determined that the shot was fired from room 211 of the Boyle Hotel.
While working on the Merced case, Bosch discovered that Soto was a survivor of the 1993 arson at the Bonnie Brae Arms Apartments which had resulted in the deaths of five children and four adults. She was freelancing on the case, but Bosch said she needed to go about it the right way. He made a phony call to the Merced tip line stating that the Bonnie Brae case was connected, and this allowed the two detectives to work on both cases simultaneously.
Bosch and Soto sought to interview the other members of Merced's band. They located the trumpet player, Angel Ojeda, in Oklahoma, and they flew there to speak with him. He revealed that he had been carrying on an affair with Maria Broussard in 1994. This led the detectives to suspect Charles Broussard of involvement in the killing. When they learned that Broussard had "accidentally" killed his best friend and employee, David Willman, they looked into Willman's background. He had owned a Kimber Model 84 that was unaccounted for. They searched the garage of Willman's former home and found the rifle as well as other weapons.
Meanwhile, tip calls were continuing to come into the department. One repeated anonymous caller stated that the police were covering up the involvement of Zeyas. Bosch and Soto traced these calls to the Broussard home, and they initially suspected the calls were from Mrs. Broussard. However, the caller was actually their maid. They went to the home where they found Mr Broussard beating the maid. Soto fired two shots at Broussard, killing him.
In the Bonnie Brae case, Bosch noted the robbery of a nearby check-cashing business on the same date, and he theorized that the fire was meant to distract the police while the robbery took place. He first suspected the security guard, but after interviewing him he concluded he was not involved. The detectives next turned their attention to the owner of the business, Maxim Boiko. They determined he was also not involved, but he gave them a lead to former employee Ana Maria Acevedo. She had lived for a time in the Bonnie Brae Apartments, creating a link between the robbery and the fire. They traced her to a convent in Calexico where she had donated a large sum of money. She was killed while on a mission to Mexico. Ultimately Bosch and Soto concluded that both the fire and the robbery had been carried out by Larry Phillips and Emil Matasareanu who were killed in a shootout with police in 1997. Thus, these three cases - Bonnie Brae Fire, EZ Bank robbery, and Merced shooting - ended with all suspects dead and no one left to stand trial.
Second Retirement and Private Investigation[]
In the course of the Bonnie Brae/EZ Bank investigation, Bosch picked the lock on the office door of Captain Larry Gandle in order to examine the robbery journals from 1993. At the end of the case he was confronted about the break-in by Lieutenant Winslow Samuels and suspended for the infraction by Captain George Crowder. Since he had less than a year left on his DROP contract, Bosch decided to retire rather than endure the disciplinary process. However, he hired Mickey Haller to sue the city. While Haller was working on Bosch's case, he asked Bosch to help with the defense of Da'Quan Foster who was accused of murdering Lexi Parks.
Initially Bosch was reluctant to cross over the line and work on a defense case. He had started rebuilding his 1950 Harley-Davidson panhead, but he missed investigative work and agreed to look at the murder book. Items in the book raised questions, such as discoloration on the victim's wrist suggesting that she wore a wristwatch. He spoke with Foster and elicited his actual alibi - he was with James Allen on the night of the murder. Then he learned that Allen had been killed about three days after Foster was arrested. Lucia Soto got him the Allen murder book which raised more questions. Bosch began to suspect that the Parks and Allen murder were connected, and he began working both cases on a dual track.
He went to the Parks' house pretending to be interested in buying it. In a closet he found a box for an expensive watch, but no watch was ever found. The victim's husband confronted Bosch but let it slip out that the watch was being repaired. Bosch determined that the watch was an Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks Offshore watch which the husband had bought from a local jewelry store. When Bosch spoke to the owner of the jewelry store he picked up a suspicious vibe. Bosch went to the AP service center in Las Vegas and spoke to the service manager who told him a strange story. The watch had originally been sold to a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, Dr. Schubert, whose wife later reported it stolen. The service manager called Parks to inform her, and she called the jewelry store. The watch was never returned to Parks because she was killed four days later. On the way home from Las Vegas Bosch learned that the jewelry store owners had been killed shortly after he had been there, and he concluded that the watch was central to everything.
On the Allen case he found security video from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery showing Foster going to Haven House on the night Parks was killed, thus validating his alibi. The video also showed another vehicle visiting the motel on the same night. That same vehicle returned twice on the night Allen was killed. From the murder book and with help from Soto, he determined that two Hollywood vice detectives, Don Ellis and Kevin Long, were connected to Allen. He found a tracker attached to his car and concluded that Ellis and Long had put it there. He sneaked into the Hollywood Division station to get copies of photos of Ellis and Long from the personnel chart. Unfortunately this tipped off Ellis and Long that he was on their trail.
Bosch decided to confront Dr. Schubert in his office. He recorded everything that followed with his phone. Schubert admitted that he had been entrapped in a blackmail scheme by Ellis and Long who extorted $100,000 from him. While they were talking, Ellis and Long entered the building intending to kill both Bosch and Schubert. In the shootout Schubert was killed and Long seriously wounded. Ellis escaped.
Bosch was detained by the Sheriff's Department and questioned by homicide detective Dick Sutton. Also at the meeting was Nancy Mendenhall who had saved Harry's life in Modesto during the Bonnie Brae case. Bosch had the recording of what transpired. Afterwards Mendenhall gave Bosch a ride home. Ellis was hiding on Bosch's deck and was planning to kill him. However, Mendenhall recognized Ellis's car parked on the street. She came back inside and shot Ellis once in the head.
Harry and Madeline attended the 995 hearing in which the charges against Da'Quan were dismissed. After the hearing Bosch and Mendenhall talked about going motorcycle riding together after he gets his vintage Harley restored.
San Fernando Police Department[]
In 2016, the year after his retirement from the LAPD, a number of things changed for Harry. With Mickey Haller representing him, he received a settlement of his unlawful termination lawsuit against the department. The amount was not disclosed, but it left Harry in a more comfortable financial position. He was no longer seeing Nancy Mendenhall but still working on his Harley. Most importantly, in June he started working as an unpaid Reserve Officer for the City of San Fernando Police Department. He was partnered with Bella Lourdes in the Crimes Against Persons unit. Their supervisor was Capt. Trevino. Anthony Valdez was the Chief of Police. Bosch and Lourdes were working a serial rapist case that they called the Screen Cutter.
Out of the blue, Harry was contacted by John Creighton to set up a meeting with Whitney Vance. He met with Vance on 4 October, 2016, and Vance asked him to search for a possible heir to his estate. Vance believe he may have fathered a child with Vibiana Duarte. Bosch's search soon led him to Vance's illegitimate son, Dominick Santanello who was killed in Viet Nam. From there he made contact with Olivia McDonald, Halley B. Lewis, and then Gabriela Lida. He confirmed that Santanello and Lida had been lovers and that Lida gave birth to a girl named Vibiana.
During his search for Vance's heirs, Bosch received a letter with a new holographic will apparently written by Vance. It included a $10 million bequest for Vance's longtime assistant, Ida Townes Forsythe. At about the same time Vance died under suspicious circumstances, and the Pasadena police determined it to be murder. Bosch and Haller figured out who the killer was and protected the interests of Vance's heirs. The key was Bosch's realization that Vance had lost the ability to write, so the new holographic will could not have been valid.
At the same time, Bosch and Lourdes were closing in on the Screen Cutter serial rapist. They were looking at several suspects when Kurt Dockweiler discovered that their investigation might lead to him. He abducted Lourdes and hid her in a bunker that he had constructed under his garage floor. Bosch and others from SFPD arrested Dockweiler. While the police were questioning him, he pulled a hidden gun. Bosch shot and killed him, then located and rescued Lourdes. Afterwards, Chief Valdez offered Bosch a full-time, paid position with the SFPD until Lourdes recovered and returned to work.
As a full-time employee, Bosch used the former drunk tank, cell 3 of the old San Fernando jail, as his office. One unsolved case he was working on was the disappearance of Esme Tavares in 2002. In the spring of 2017, Bosch was informed of plans to release Preston Borders from death row at San Quentin State Prison. Bosch and Frankie Sheehan had arrested Borders in 1987 for the rape and murder of Danielle Skyler. It was one of the first cases in which Bosch was lead investigator. However, new DNA testing suggested that Borders might not have been the killer. DNA taken from a minute spot of semen on Skyler's pajamas matched another convicted rapist, Lucas John Olmer. Bosch refused to believe that Borders was innocent, and he set out to prove it. Furthermore, the D.A.'s handling of the new evidence implied that Bosch had framed Borders in 1987, and he intended to clear his name by proving that the DNA was tainted. He asked Mickey Haller to give him legal advice.
On the same day that he was informed of the Borders situation, a double murder occurred at La Familia Farmacia. The victims were father and son pharmacists and owners of the business. Bosch ended up working on that investigation as well. Evidence indicated that the Farmacia case was not actually a robbery. Bosch and other members of the SFPD followed clues that led them to a drug gang run by a man known as Santos. Bosch reconnected with Jerry Edgar who brought in DEA Agent Hovan. At Hovan's suggestion, Bosch agreed to go undercover to investigate both the drug gang and the murders. He found that the drug gang was using a private plane to fly homeless addicts around southern California getting bogus scrips for opioids filled. One of their sources for scrips was Pacoima Pain and Urgent Care, and their base of operation was Slab City in the Imperial County desert.
In the Borders case, Bosch could not figure out how DNA from Olmer had gotten onto Danielle Skyler's pajamas. He believed it must have been planted, but the evidence storage process appeared to be solid. Then Bosch learned that Olmer's attorney, Lance Cronyn, might have retained possession of an unused sample of the DNA evidence from Olmer's trial. Since Cronyn was also, conveniently, Borders' new lawyer, Bosch suspected that Cronyn had found a way to plant the DNA in Skyler's evidence box.
Bosch enlisted Cisco to help him in going undercover on the Familia Farmacia murders and the opioid ring. In the process, Bosch showed Cisco a video of the Skyler evidence box being reopened by Lucia Soto and others. Cisco noticed a property control officer, Terrence Spencer, in the background observing the scene with great interest. With the help of Cisco and Haller, Bosch linked Spencer to Cronyn in a conspiracy to plant Olmer's DNA evidence in the Skyler evidence box. Bosch handed off that case to Haller while he went undercover.
Bosch successfully infiltrated the drug operation by posing as a homeless addict. He observed their base in Slab City and their method of flying people around the state filling bogus prescriptions for oxycodone. The man named Soto was gone and replaced by two other men. These were the two men who had committed the Familia Farmacia murders. When the two men attempted to kill Bosch by pushing him out of their private plane, Bosch succeeded in stabbing and killing one of them. The other man jumped out of the plane into the Salton Sea where he died.
While working undercover, Bosch met an addict named Elizabeth Clayton. He noticed that she had a tattoo that said "DAISY 1994-2009." Elizabeth explained that this referred to her daughter, Daisy Clayton, who had been murdered. Though he didn't want to admit it, Bosch was attracted to Clayton, in part because she had a resemblance to Eleanor Wish. After the drug ring was broken up, Bosch got her into a "cold turkey" withdrawal with Cisco and the Road Saints, followed by a month at a rehab clinic. He paid for the clinic with his earthquake emergency fund. In addition, Harry decided to begin investigating Daisy's murder. Harry's connection with the San Fernando Police Department ended at this time because of mistakes he made while working on the Familia Farmacia case.
Working with Renee Ballard[]
In 2018, following Elizabeth's treatment, Harry invited her to move in with him while he pursued Daisy's killer. While snooping through the files at Hollywood Division, Bosch met Renee Ballard. She was initially suspicious of Bosch, but after he explained about Daisy and her mother, Ballard became intrigued. She asked to be allowed to work on the case with him, and Bosch reluctantly agreed. They initially focused on John McMullen as a person of interest, but they cleared him as a suspect based on evidence Ballard uncovered. Next Ballard looked into a former street person named Dennis Eagleton (AKA Eagle), but that was also a dead end.
At the same time, Bosch worked a cold case for the San Fernando P.D. involving the murder of Cristobal Vega. Bosch and Bella Lourdes focused on Tranquillo Cortez as their primary suspect, based largely on the testimony of Martin Perez. In retaliation, Cortez hired Mexican Mafia gangsters to abduct Bosch. He was rescued by Ballard, Lourdes and Danny Sisto. The LAPD assigned their Special Investigation Section (SIS) to put surveillance on Cortez. Harry insisted on being present when the SIS cornered Cortez and watched as they killed him.
When Bosch returned to the Hollywood station after the Cortez incident wrapped up, he was told that Ballard left a message for him to meet her at the headquarters of Chemi-Cal Bio Services. There he found Roger Dillon about to assault and probably kill Ballard. Bosch took custody of Dillon and sent Ballard away so that she would not be criticized or disciplined for her mistakes in pursuing Dillon. Bosch then subjected Dillon to harsh interrogation about the murder of Daisy Clayton and other victims. Bosch recorded Dillon's confession. Bosch then called the LAPD and told them where to find Dillon.
In 2019 Bosch had two serious medical issues. He had knee replacement surgery, and he was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia that was most likely the result of handling radioactive Cesium in 2007 during his investigation into the murder of Dr. Stanley Kent. He consulted with Mickey Haller about the possibility of suing the hospital that the Cesium came from. At this time Bosch was also very busy with several cases. Haller enlisted Bosch's help in defending a man accused of killing Judge Walter Mongomery. Bosch and Haller got the murder charge dropped, and Bosch continued to investigate who had actually killed the judge.
At about the same time Bosch attended the funeral of John Jack Thompson, a former detective and mentor to Bosch. Thompson's widow gave Bosch the murder book on John Hilton which John Jack had kept following his retirement. Since murder books are supposed to remain in police files, it was not clear to Bosch why Thompson had the book or what he wanted Bosch to do with it. Bosch decided to look into the case, and he asked Renee Ballard to work with him. They narrowed down the suspect list to Elvin Kidd and a few of his associates in the Rollin' 60's Crips. Bosch turned his attention back to the Montgomery murder while Ballard closed the Hilton case by arresting Elvin Kidd.
Harry's focus narrowed down to Clayton Manley, a lawyer who had a grudge against Judge Montgomery, and an unidentified female who was seen on two videos. Bosch believed she might actually be the killer and he called her the Black Widow. When Manley fell to his death from the top of his office high-rise, Bosch rushed to the scene where he was cornered by the Black Widow. He would have been killed by her, but he was saved by Ballard. Between Bosch and Ballard, they closed five cases in a very short time - John Hilton, Walter Montgomery, Edison Banks, Clayton Manley and attorney Mitchell.
Unfortunately, Ballard was stabbed while while rescuing Bosch. He visited her in the hospital afterward and they discussed taking on another cold case at a later time - the disappearance of Sarah Freelander.
One of the odd things about Bosch at this point in his life is his personal vehicle. Although he has owned other vehicles in the past, including a Mercedes-Benz, he still has an ancient Jeep Cherokee in 2019. At one point he also owned and was rebuilding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, but there is no indication that he ever rode it or even got it running. There is also no indication that he sold it.
When Mickey Haller was arrested in October 2019, Bosch offered to put up money for bail, and he later assisted with investigating the case. He uncovered the connection between BioGreen Industries, Louis Opparizio and Sam Scales. He also uncovered the FBI involvement, which Haller used to prove his innocence.
On January 1, 2021, Bosch was contacted by Renee Ballard about the unsolved murder of Albert Lee. The gun used to kill Lee had been used in another murder. Bosch agreed to work with Ballard on the case. Bosch discovered that Lee was in debt to a dentist named John William James. Bosch always suspected James of the murder but could never prove it. Then James himself was killed. This led Bosch and Ballard to other dentists who were business partners with James. Bosch assisted Ballard in questioning a police informant known as LP-Three who revealed that a police officer had been working with the leader of the Las Palmas 13 gang. Putting all the pieces together, Bosch and Ballard pressured Dennis Hoyle to talk. Then they went after Jason Abbott and arrested him.
When Ballard set a trap for the Midnight Men, Bosch once more agreed to help. He kept an eye on Hannah Stovall, a potential victim of the rapists, while Ballard stayed at Stovall's house. Bosch wasn't happy with Ballard's plan but didn't interfere. Later, Bosch and Ballard confronted Stovall's ex-boyfriend, Gilbert Denning, and got him to confess about how he contacted the Midnight Men. Bosch and Ballard talked about being partners in private investigations. That idea didn't work out because Ballard decided to stay with LAPD.
Months later Ballard asked Bosch to become a volunteer investigator in a revived Open/Unsolved unit. Bosch agreed so that he could work on an unsolved case that had bothered him for a long time - the murder of the Gallagher family in 2013. Bosch had investigated the murder at the time and had a solid suspect, a man named Finbar McShane, but not enough evidence to charge him. Then Bosch retired and McShane disappeared. Bosch started his new investigation by visiting the desert place where the Gallaghers were buried by their killer. Harry found flowers growing there. They were desert star flowers (in the Genus Monoptilon).
Bosch interviewed Sheila Walsh who had been an employee of the Gallagher's company. But work on the Gallagher case had to take a back seat to the murder of Sarah Pearlman. A key piece of evidence was a palm print found on the victim's bedroom window. At Bosch's suggestion, the original print was reexamined for DNA, and some was found. This matched DNA from the murder of Laura Wilson. In the Wilson case, the DNA came from urine left at the scene by the killer. The urine contained blood cells, indicating that the killer had a bladder of kidney disease. Using the DNA evidence, Bosch and Ballard narrowed the field of suspects in the Pearlman killing to Nelson Hastings. Bosch and Ballard confronted Hastings to arrest him, but instead they learned that Hastings had donated a kidney to a friend, Ted Rawls. This meant that a urine specimen from Rawls would yield DNA matching Hastings.
Bosch tried to follow Rawls car but Rawls saw him and caused a collision. (Bosch was driving his ancient Jeep Cherokee which was totaled). A gunfight ensued in which Rawls was hit but not killed and Bosch was injured (not seriously). Rawls then killed himself rather than face arrest and prosecution. The LAPD chief tried to cover up the fact that Rawls had been a volunteer for the new Open/Unsolved unit. That didn't sit well with Bosch so he leaked the info to Keisha Russell from the L.A. Times.
Bosch had a hunch that Rawls might have kept souvenirs from other murders and he might have been trying to dispose of them when Bosch caught up with him. Bosch and Ballard went dumpster diving near Rawls' business and found the evidence, including a locket belonging to murder victim Olga Reyes.
With the Pearlman case wrapped up, Bosch was able to return to the Gallagher family case. From Sheila Walsh he learned that McShane might be in the Key West area. Bosch went there and located McShane who was then using the alias Davy Byrne. Bosch found McShane living on a houseboat. He had killed Henry Jordan and his wife and taken over their assets. Bosch broke into the houseboat to confront McShane, but Finbar was waiting for him. Bosch was armed only with a screwdriver. There was a struggle in which Bosch stabbed and killed McShane. It is unknown what Bosch did with the screwdriver, McShane's body or any other possible evidence. It does not appear that Bosch reported any of this to the Key West police, although they knew he was looking for McShane.
At this time Harry reveals to Maddie that he has terminal bone marrow cancer. He has a stash of counterfeit fentanyl pills to take when he decides it is time to end his life.
Working with Mickey Haller[]
In 2022 Bosch starts working for Mickey Haller as investigator and driver. At about this same time he begins treatment in an experimental program at UCLA. where he receives an infusion of Lutetium 177. His work for Haller was at least partly motivated by the desire to get health insurance so that he would not have to go to the Veterans Administration for treatment.
In March 2023 Bosch and Haller are looking through requests from prison inmates for assistance in overturning their convictions. They decided to pursue the case of Lucinda Sanz who is in Chino Women's Prison for the death of her husband, Roberto. Bosch sees some issues with the case that make him question the validity of her trial and conviction. Bosch and Haller pursue various lines of evidence, leading to strong suspicion that Roberto was murdered by one of his fellow deputy sheriffs. One of the key pieces of evidence against Sanz is the gunshot residue (GSR) allegedly found on her hands. The official report states that Lucinda's hands were swabbed by deputy Keith Mitchell, but she states that she was swabbed by a woman. From photographs Lucinda identifies deputy Stephanie Sanger.
Bosch and Haller locate the GSR swabs at a lab. New testing shows no DNA from lucinda on the swabs, but there is DNA from another person. This DNA is compared with DNA from a cigarette butt discarded by Sanger. There is a match, confirming that Sanger had handled the swabs. Bosch then analyzes cell phone data provided by AT&T, a technique called geofencing. The data demonstrates that Sanger was following Roberto on the day he was killed. Hayden Morris attempts to suppress this evidence but the judge allows Bosch to testify about it. Bosch is questioned by Maggie McPherson who is brought in by Morris to challenge Bosch's credibility. She suggests that Bosch is suffering from dementia. Bosch holds up well in his testimony and is quite convincing.
A short time later Bosch is watching Sanger outside the courtroom during a break. A man approaches Sanger and they begin to argue. The man grabs Sanger's gun and shoots her. She dies on the scene, essentially bring to conclusion the case of Lucinda Sanz.
Case record[]
For a list of Harry Bosch's closed cases, see here.
WARNING: this article contains spoilers regarding the identity of killers.
Portrayal[]
On 31 October 2013, Amazon Studios announced that Bosch would be played by Titus Welliver in the streaming series Bosch. As of 2021 the series consists of seven seasons. There are a number of differences between the books and the series. Different episodes of the series draw plot elements from various Bosch books and put them together in ways that deviate in varying degrees from the books. The timeline of the series is entirely different from the books. In the Amazon series, Harry is "47 years old" (having been born in 1967), and was placed in McClaren Youth Hall on 29 April 1978. He is a veteran of the first Gulf War in 1991, where he was part of a Special Forces team that cleared tunnels. He has now been a police officer for twenty years with a one year exception when he re-upped with the Army after 9/11, as many LAPD officers did. He came back to the force after serving in Afghanistan and again encountering tunnel warfare. In the series, Harry never retires or leaves the LAPD and does not go to work for the San Fernando Police Department. He continues to be partnered with Jerry Edgar. Mickey Haller is not part of the series.
On May 6, 2022, Welliver will reprise the role as Harry Bosch, who is now a Private Detective in the Amazon Freevee spin-off "Bosch: Legacy" (recently rebranded from IMDb TV).
In addition, Welliver is physically different from the Harry Bosch described in the books. The latter is said to have curly hair and a mustache. There has been much online discussion of details such as Harry's left handedness, where his holster is located, and what type of handgun he uses or should use.
Aside from these differences, many aspects of the series track very closely with the books. Bosch's personality in the series is exactly the same as in the books. His relationship with his daughter is essentially the same. His view of life is the same, stating in the second episode that he doesn't "believe that there's a better world than this one" and that his pursuit of justice is driven by his conviction that this life "is the only one we got."
To sum up the portrayal, Connelly writes in the dedication to The Night Fire, "For Titus Welliver, for breathing life into Harry Bosch. Hold Fast."
(For other significant differences between the books and the series, see Wiki pages for Eleanor Wish, Madeline Bosch, Irvin Irving, Jerry Edgar, Julia Brasher, Francis Sheehan, Mickey Haller, and other key characters.)
In both versions of the pilot episode ("The Bone Run" and "`Tis the Season"), a young Harry was played in flashbacks by Gregory Kasyan. The twelve-year-old Harry was later played in "High Low" and "The Magic Castle" by Titus Welliver's youngest son, Quinn Welliver. In "Bosch: Legacy", the 20 year old Bosch was later played in the flashbacks by Titus Welliver's eldest son, Eamonn Welliver.
Bosch was also played by Tim Abell in the 2006 video adaptation The High Tower.
Appearances[]
- For more specific information on individual appearances, see here
- The Black Echo
- The Black Ice
- The Concrete Blonde
- The Last Coyote
- Trunk Music
- Angels Flight
- A Darkness More Than Night
- Cons, Scams & Grifts (mentioned)
- Chasing the Dime (mentioned; unnamed)
- City of Bones
- The Last Detective (unnamed)
- Lost Light
- "Christmas Even"
- The Narrows
- "Cielo Azul"
- The Closers
- "Angle of Investigation"
- Void Moon (unnamed)
- Strange Bedfellows
- Echo Park (The High Tower)
- "Suicide Run"
- The Overlook
- "One Dollar Jackpot"
- "Father's Day"
- "Murder on Mount Olympus"
- The Brass Verdict (The Hit (mentioned))
- The Scarecrow (mentioned; unnamed)
- Castle: "Deep in Death" (mentioned)
- 9 Dragons
- "Blue on Black"
- The Reversal
- The Fifth Witness
- The Drop
- "Homicide Special"
- "Blood Washes Off"
- "A Fine Mist of Blood"
- The Black Box
- The Gods of Guilt
- "Switchblade"
- Bosch
- "Red Eye"
- The Burning Room
- "The Crooked Man"
- The Crossing
- The Wrong Side of Goodbye
- "Nighthawks"
- Two Kinds of Truth
- Dark Sacred Night
- The Night Fire
- The Law of Innocence
- The Dark Hours
References[]
- ↑ Lost Light, pg. 20
- ↑ The Black Ice, chapter 19, "On the day the housemother at McClaren told him the visits were over because his mother was dead, he took the news unlike most boys of eleven."
- ↑ Black Echo begins on Sunday, May 20. The year is not specified, but May 20, 1990 was a Sunday. The book was published in 1992, but the calendar does not fit for either 1991 or 1992.
- ↑ Bosch collected a shell casing from the 21 gun salute. During his career he has attended many police funerals where there is typically a firing squad salute. One of his habits is collecting a brass casing from each funeral. He has a jar full of them.