This was my second Michael Connelly and it was enjoyable. It was entertaining which is what you want out of a book. Harry Bosch is fun and Connelly does a good job of keeping the story moving, throwing in some romance, a snappy LA style, and good insight into human nature. I know I'm a bit late discovering this author but 'll methodically work through his stores.

This is my first Michael Connelly book and I enjoyed very much. It's a somewhat mindless action thriller but eminently enjoyable with surprising twists and turns and hard to put down. Just what I wanted.

I got this book on an Audible sale and it was well worth it. I have read some of the newer Harry Bosch series and had not realized this was the first book of the series. This tell how Eleanor and Harry met. Dick Hill always does an excellent job. I will make a point now of going back and reading the other books in the series.

I dislike predictable stories where I can guess the ending long before I get there. This mystery kept me guessing. The narrator was very good. He changed his voice just enough to help identify the characters.
One of the best books I had listend to in a long time. I couldn't put it down.

Good Reader, but at my age, 82, I do not like violent stories. Although I do like thrillers. It is more in the MC Beaton variety, and Louise Penny and a great deal more non-fiction

Since I had never read a Harry Bosch book, I thought I would start with the first one. It's a good place to start: in introducing Harry to the reader, Connelly gives us his background as a tunnel rat in Viet Nam. Hard-boiled detectives are not often my favorite characters. I will say that Harry is very well-drawn, and the book is well-written with many twists and turns before you reach a really surprise ending.

The only problem I had is that I just didn't find Harry very likeable, despite an excellent performance by Dick Hill. That diminished my enjoyment quite a bit. I will try another book and see if my enjoyment increases.

In the meantime, if hardboiled, somewhat renegade, detectives are your thing, this book is for you! Enjoy!

I had to go back and listen to the first ever Harry Bosch book, and I'm glad I did. Writers have a lot of energy when they first write a character; they have that twinkle in the eye, just like in a new romance.

Black Echo is a very cool book, first off, because it says something about the Vietnam War that I never knew before, and I love history. When true history is woven into a story it gains dimension, and we all learn something. When war is sewn into a story, it illustrates and makes real the suffering those who were int hose jungles experienced, teaching something we should all understand.

I wasn't quite old enough to have experienced the Vietnam War, but my older sister was, and we used to watch the numbers come up in the morning newspaper, wondering which one of her friends would go next. I pressed my nose up against our Panasonic to watch the first horrible scenes ever shown live or nearly so on TV.

Connelly brings to life the Tunnel Rats--the soldiers that lived and died in the dark, their screams heard as a black echo, just going on and on. A lot of bad evil things happened there in the war, and were carried back in men's minds, as in the mind of Harry Bosch, the main character.

Here, Detective Bosch finds a murder victim in a Hollywood tunnel who turns out to be somebody he fought with as a boy in the tunnels of South Vietnam. The story unfolds the frightening, foreign, dark tunnels of his past with the darkness in his life; the historical darkness of the tunnels is an allegory to the state of people's hearts, and of the places the Vietnam Veterans ended up in America.

Also, it is interesting to listen to s story written before cellphones. For instance, Harry Bosch says "Stop! There's a phone!" Of course, he saw a phone booth he wanted to use, but I was wondering if someone had dropped the phone in the street. Everything had to be done differently before the iPhone, and as usual, fiction shows this best.

The story is as well narrated and very interesting. I recommend it highly.

Good classic detective story, that follows the classic "rough around the edges, good hearted, not well liked detective" format. Though its is somewhat cookie cutter I still enjoyed the book and the narration is solid. I will listen to more in the Harry Bosch series

This was a very good detective mystery -- it kept me riveted to the end, even though there were a few cliches (such as the detective getting involved with the female FBI agent he is paired with). But I had a hard time pulling myself away from my Zune to get something done around the house while I still had some of "The Black Echo" left to listen to.

The descriptive text made this story very easy to visualize and the reader's voice was easy to listen to.

The characters were realistic and so were the conversations.

I read this book after attending Michael Connelly's live discussion on Facebook, sponsored by Audible. It was a terrific session. Having just finished 9 Dragons, I asked him which book to read for the back story of Eleanor & Harry; he recommended Black Echo. This is the least enjoyable of all the Bosch books I've read.

The plot drags towards the middle and it's a little difficult to keep going. It's easy enough to follow, just not that interesting. Only my desire to learn how Harry met Eleanor and what happened between them kept me going. There's obviously more, but I'm not sure I'll search it out.

The narration is the worst part, and makes it more difficult to slog through the slow middle. Hill's voicing of Eleanor makes her sound like a young, scared simpleton. Several of the characters are from New Iberia, LA, but Hill uses a New York accent for everyone. It's one of the worst readings I've ever listened to.

Harry Bosch is a creep in this book too. I like Harry from the other books, especially 9 Dragons, but if this had been my first Bosch novel, it would also have been my last. He's a pretty unsympathetic character, hard to identify with, in this book.

In sum, not the best Bosch book. It will be a while before I read another.