Product Description

Harry Bosch is assigned a homicide call in South L.A. that takes him to Fortune Liquors, where the Chinese owner has been shot to death behind the counter in an apparent robbery.

Joined by members of the department's Asian Crime Unit, Bosch relentlessly investigates the killing and soon identifies a suspect, a Los Angeles member of a Hong Kong triad. But before Harry can close in, he gets the word that his young daughter Maddie, who lives in Hong Kong with her mother, is missing.

Bosch drops everything to journey across the Pacific to find his daughter. Could her disappearance and the case be connected? With the stakes of the investigation so high and so personal, Bosch is up against the clock in a new city, where nothing is at it seems.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #378437 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 377 pages

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, October 2009: An investigation into a cold-blooded murder introduces Detective Harry Bosch to a Chinese underworld lurking in the dark recesses of the City of Angels. Its tentacles are far reaching, yet it remains shrouded in secrecy due to time-honored cultural traditions that keep the exploited from speaking out. To the victim's family, Bosch promises revenge, but when his own daughter suddenly becomes a target, he promises blood. However, working a case with leads on both sides of the Pacific provides little room (or time) for error. 9 Dragons is a gritty, coffee-and-cigarettes crime thriller full of smart twists and generous helpings of suspense. Fans of Michael Connelly can expect another exceptional thrill ride, while newcomers will be immediately engaged by the tortured and unrelenting Bosch. "He knew one day it would come to this, that the darkness would find [his daughter] and that she would be used to get him," writes Connelly. "That day was now." --Dave Callanan

From Publishers Weekly
Bestseller Connelly nimbly balances Harry Bosch's personal and professional lives, both of which take a substantial beating, in his 14th novel to feature the LAPD homicide detective. Bosch, last seen with his recently discovered half-brother, lawyer Mickey Haller, in The Brass Verdict (2008), investigates the shooting death of a liquor store owner. While the murder has none of the hallmarks of a regular gang hit, Bosch discovers the dead man was paying a weekly protection fee to a man Bosch suspects is part of a Chinese triad. Even though Bosch is warned to drop the case, he doesn't take the threat seriously until he receives a video showing his 13-year-old daughter, Madeline, being kidnapped in Hong Kong, where she lives with her mother and Bosch's ex-wife, a former FBI agent. Bosch flies to Hong Kong to try to rescue Madeline, prepared to face down one of the world's most powerful crime syndicates. Tenacious as ever, Bosch is even more formidable in his role as a protective father. 10-city author tour. (Oct. 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by Donna Rifkind Michael Connelly's crime novels are so infused with Los Angeles atmosphere that some readers might have trouble imagining his key protagonist, Detective Harry Bosch, surviving for long in any other environment. In more than a dozen previous novels, Bosch has occasionally followed a case beyond L.A. -- to Mexico, say, or Las Vegas. But the City of Angels is where he begins and ends his work, searching every overlook and underpass in his single-minded mission to bring murderers to justice. Bosch is feeling his age after more than 30 years spent working homicide, mostly for the LAPD, and now relies mostly on momentum. "I just want to keep moving," he insists throughout his latest case, which takes him from Los Angeles all the way to Hong Kong. By sending the cop so far from his beat, is Connelly trying to shore up an aging series, to reinvigorate a worn-out hero? No and no. There's still plenty of juice in the older but fiercer Bosch. As the new novel begins, he's eagerly awaiting a new assignment at Homicide Special while losing patience with his young partner, Detective Ignacio Ferras, whose dedication to police work seems to be waning. Faithful readers know that Hong Kong isn't a far-fetched destination for Bosch. In "Lost Light" (2003), he discovered he had a daughter named Madeline, who's now 13 and living in Hong Kong with her mother, an ex-FBI agent. Harry visits Maddie regularly and keeps in close touch via texting, video and e-mail on matching late-model cellphones that they bought together. (This capitulation to digital tech is a sure sign of paternal devotion: In the last Bosch novel, "The Overlook," famously old-fashioned Harry was dependent on his partner, Ignacio, to help him work a BlackBerry.) Bosch's latest case begins close to home, in a familiar South L.A. neighborhood. In fact, the victim is someone he knew. John Li was the 70-ish owner of Fortune Liquors, located just a few blocks from the epicenter of the 1992 riots. Bosch had been involved in a case on this gang-infested street 12 years ago and remembers the store and its proprietor well. Now Li, a Chinese immigrant who stubbornly refused to relocate despite a slew of dangerous robberies and the urgings of his wife and grown children, has been shot dead behind the store's counter. "Three in the chest was not personal. It was business," Bosch notes of this particular murder. But he doubts that his first suspect, a teenage shoplifter, was the shooter: "That would be too easy and there were things about the case that defied easy." Instead, with the help of a young detective from the Asian Gang Unit, he gathers clues suggesting that Li owed protection money to a Hong Kong triad, a criminal organization with origins in 17th-century China. When Bosch gets a menacing call on his office phone warning him to back off the case, he's not especially fazed. But everything changes after he receives a cellphone video containing evidence that Maddie has been kidnapped in Hong Kong. Was there a leak within the various police departments involved in the investigation? And how can Bosch begin to penetrate the shadowy triad, whose lethal influence on both sides of the Pacific is now threatening his own daughter? With no time to brood, Harry jumps on a plane and counts on pure momentum to propel him through a frantic 39-hour "day" in which he races through Hong Kong and its environs to try to rescue Maddie. But that momentum, while crucial, comes with a price: In his adrenaline-charged pursuit, Bosch puts lives in jeopardy and leaves a trail of blood behind him when he returns to Los Angeles. Connelly has taken his hero into unfamiliar territory in more ways than one. Bosch's dash through an intensely atmospheric foreign city -- teeming, incomprehensibly chaotic, dense with smoke from the rites of an ancient festival -- is, for the first time, the duty of a terrified parent as well as a professional detective. Forced to give up any pretense of bulletproof independence, from now on the lone-wolf cop "would be forever connected to the world in the way only a father knew." It's tempting to look at Connelly's large oeuvre -- which includes novels starring two other engaging protagonists, lawyer Mickey Haller and journalist Jack McEvoy -- as one huge, Trollopean vision of the way we live now, offering a swift, up-to-the-minute mosaic of contemporary urban life by exploring every corner of the criminal justice system, from ganglands to gated communities, from office cubicles to forensic labs, from boom times to recessions. "Nine Dragons" continues to broaden that vision through Bosch's eyes with an installment that's at once more global and more intimate than anything Connelly has published since his first novel, "The Black Echo" (1992). bookworld@washpost.com
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

The Best Harry Bosch Tale Since Echo Park!
After disappointing Harry Bosch tales (The Overlook, The Brass Dragon) Connelly has brought back the Harry that hooked me in the earlier tales. Harry is still back in homicide (no closer duty for him) and during a slow night he is asked to investigate a shooting in a "rougher" section of LA. Harry and his partner (Ferras) grudgingly take the assignment and learn that a convenience store owner was murdered in his store. The case draws Harry's interest because he remembers the store and that the owner was once kind to him several years earlier. He assures the owner's son that he will catch the culprit.

As Harry starts to realize that this might not have been a routine robbery but a possible execution by a Triad hitman. Harry starts to zero in on a suspect and then receives a threatening call to tell him to back off. Harry shrugs it off and continues but then his investigation stalls when he receives a video showing that his daughter (Maddy) being kidnapped in Hong Kong. He rushes off to save her realizing that if he is not back by the end of the weekend a possible suspect in the shooting will be set free.

It is a tense plane ride to Hong Kong and Harry feels powerless because there is nothing he can do in the air. When he gets to Hong Kong he is aided by his ex-wife (Eleanor Wish) and her boyfriend. Harry has limited clues but through very good forensic science he was able to possibly know where to look for Maddy. It becomes a race to find Maddy because any delay could mean that she might already be dead.

The tension of the chase is so tense you can cut it with a knife and the "determined " Harry definitely shows through. There is one sequence at a boat where the action is pulse pounding and the tension rife.
The book also has a short but excellent appearance by Mickey Haller (the Lincoln Lawyer and Harry's half brother) and there are references to Jack McEvoy (Connelly's other main character). As long as Mr. Connelly can deliver Harry Bosch tales of this caliber, Harry will continue to be one of the most intriguing law enforcement figures in fiction today!

Not Up To Standards
In his latest thriller featuring LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, author Michael Connelly branches out into international waters. The plot involves Bosch investigating a murder of the Asian owner of a liquor store in South-Central LA. For translating purposes, Bosch calls in an Asian Detective, Chu, to help with the case. What unfolds appears to be a Asian Triad gang related extortion/murder. Meanwhile, Bosch's teenaged daughter is living in Hong Kong with her mother, who works for a swanky Hong Kong casino. After arresting a suspect, Bosch is warned to back off the case or eles "there will be consequences". Well, he soon receives a video on his phone showing his daughter being held hostage in Hong Kong. Is there a leak in the department? Is Chu playing both sides of the fence? Bosch drops everything to rush to Hong Kong to try to find his daughter. Similarities with the movie "Taken" are obvious. This is where the story starts to become somewhat far-fetched. The way he is able to find his daughter is somewhat ridiculous and things are written with a by-the-numbers predictibility. I'm not going to get into details but the ending is rather lame and unsatisfying and I look forward to a better effort from Connelly next time.

A terrific story
Nine Dragons starts with the murder of a Chinese shopkeeper in LA. Evidence connected to the murder makes LAPD Detective Harry Bosch suspect that triads were involved. Triads are vicious, powerful Chinese gangs, whose tentacles are everywhere, so Bosch turns to LAPD's Asian Gangs Unit for background information on triad activity in LA, and an ethnic-Chinese detective from the AGU is assigned to help out with the case. There is some immediate friction between the Chinese detective and Bosch, so when mysterious events threaten to derail the murder investigation, it's easy for Bosch to suspect that there's a leak somewhere in the LAPD, probably within the AGU itself.

But all that is put on the backburner when someone from Bosch's own family is kidnapped in Hong Kong, apparently by the same triad implicated in the shopkeeper's murder. The kidnappers' message is clear: BACK OFF! And that's when things really get interesting.

Connelly takes numerous threads and weaves them together to create a terrific story. The main thread, of course, is Bosch's desperate search for his kidnapped family-member; but interwoven with that is the murder investigation that preceded the kidnapping, with Connelly doing a fine job detailing the methodical, step-by-step investigative process, including some interesting developments in forensic science. And Bosch's attempt to discover the source of the leak that threatens to sabotage his murder investigation is interwoven with the personal friction developing between Bosch, his partner, and the Chinese detective from the AGU. Connelly weaves the various threads together to form an apparently satisfactory solution to all those puzzles, but an unexpected plot twist right at the end shows how misleading superficial appearances can be. The final clues change everything and lead Bosch to a conclusion that is simply stunning.

Nine Dragons is a terrific story, told by a real master.