A Darkness More Than Night (2001)
Harry Bosch is up to his neck
in a case that has transfixed all of celebrity-mad Los Angeles: a movie
director is charged with murdering an actress during sex, and then
staging her death to make it look
like a suicide. Bosch is
both the arresting officer and the star witness in a trial that has
brought the Hollywood media pack out in full-throated frenzy.
Meanwhile, Terry McCaleb
is enjoying an idyllic retirement on Catalina Island when a visit from
an old colleague brings his former world rushing back. It's a murder,
the unreadable kind of
murder he specialized in
solving back in his FBI days. The investigation has stalled, and the
sheriff's office is asking McCaleb to take a quick look at the murder
book to see if he turns up
something they've missed.
McCaleb's
first reading of the crime scene leads him to look for a methodical
killer with a taste for rituals and revenge. As his quick
look accelerates into a
full-sprint investigation, the two crimes his murdered loner and
Bosch's movie director begin to overlap strangely. With one
unsettling revelation after
another, they merge,
becoming one impossible, terrifying case, involving almost inconceivable
calculation. McCaleb believes he has unmasked the most frightening
killer ever to cross his
sights. But his
investigation tangles with Bosch's lines, and the two men find
themselves at odds in the most dangerous investigation of their lives.