Detective Harry Bosch searches for a killer who thinks he’s been safe for twenty years.
Harry Bosch first encountered Anneke Jespersen in a dark alley. She’s been shot, execution style, on one of the most notorious night in Los Angeles history, a night when the city burned and the police protected no one. anneke carried a journalist’s credentials, and Bosch assumed she had come to the center of the riots in search of a story. In the wake of the smoke and chaos, his investigation was reassigned and went nowhere. Jespersen’s murder was never solved.
Nearing the twentieth anniversary of the riots, the Open-Unsolved Unit is tasked with clearing cases from that era. And in a case that he has never been able to forget, Bosch finds something new : the gun that killed Anneke Jespersen was also used in other crimes years later. Starting with a prison visit to a murderer who is hoping for parole, Bosch uses every bit of leverage and skill he has acquired in his decades on the force to pry open the case and get the sliver of a lead. He begins his hunt anew.
The investigation will stretch from the roughest neighborhoods of Los Angeles to distant battleground where Jespersen once covered bloody conflicts. What really brought her to Los Angeles ? Was her own drive for justice a match fo Bosch’s ? And in a new age, will Bosch find the «black box,» the one piece of evidence that pulls the case together and makes justice possible at last ?
Riveting and constantly accelarating, the Black Box is the most profound case yet for the unrelenting Harry Bosch, «one of the greats of crime fiction» (New York Daily News).