Bookmark A fast paced page turner

CROSS continent locations, fast moving story and pace setting investigation, that’s Michael Connelly’s Nine Dragons. Harry Bosch, an anxious father, a detective in Los Angeles, drops everything and rushes to Hong Kong because his teenage daughter has been taken captive by persons apparently involved in the crime he was investigating. At the end of his 36 hour stay in the Asian city, he secures his daughter. But there are nine deaths during this period, all on his route.

That sums up the plot. But the suspense and thrill over the identity of the killers of an aged Chinese shop owner in LA, with which the book opens, lingers till the end. Triads, the organised underground system, said to be over 200 years old, is the primary suspect. The members of the Triad collect ‘protection, money from businessmen. Harry investigating the murder recovers a bullet casing from the mouth of the dead man. That is just about the only clue he has.

Just as he zeroes in on a member of the Triad, he gets the video via phone of his daughter, held captive. In Hong Kong, Harry and his former wife go searching for their daughter using clues from the video, which is blown up using latest technology. The search leads them to an underground building, a hotel, where the wife gets killed by robbers. Daughter is rescued from the trunk of a car.

Back home, the bullet casing leads Harry to the owner of the gun used in the murder of the Chinese. But he is not the killer. Then who is? Well, that’s where the climax is. This is the 15th in the harry Bosch series of novels by the author. A highly readable thriller.

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