The Black Echo: Harry Bosch Series, Book 1

I love Connelly's Bosch novels and normally, an author of gets better with age. Having said that, I wasn't expecting this first book in the Bosch series to be as good as the later novels in the series.

This book is probably one of my top 2 or 3 favorites!!

Connelly manages to weave together a very intriguing and complex story!!

I kept saying to myself, "This Story is going to have SOOOOOO many holes", but he masterfully ties up all the loose ends.

The reader does a good job as well.

Highly recommended!!

I have read all of the Harry Bosch mysteries over the past few years. While I am not a lifelong Dectective devotee, Harry Bosch is my favorite character and Michael Connelly is my favorite author. Somehow I have managed to read the 13 Bosch books in a random order. This book, The Black Echo, is the first in the series and recounts Harry Bosch's days as a "tunnel rat" during the Vietnam War. It does a good job of filling in the blanks that you only get bits and pieces about in the later works. As a testament to the talented pen of Connelly, much/most of the Bosch character is developed in this first book.

If you haven't read any of the Bosch series, this is a good place to start. If you have read later books, you will still enjoy this one.

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.

I listened to A Darkness More Than Night a while back and I was not impressed. After I reviewed the book I said I would listen to another with a different narrator. Both the narrator (Dick Hill) and the story made this book an excellent listen. I am used to hearing Hill and his superb narration in Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. His work here too is commendable. More than just the narration, Connelly introduces Bosch as both a likable and roguish police detective whose ways seem more suited to those of a private eye. This story had the right amount of everything; romance, misdirection, tragedy, vindication, bad guys, victims, flawed characters and you name it. I will listen to another Harry Bosch novel, especially if Hill did the narration. This was purchased on an Audible sale and was the best value I received in more than three years. It would have been well worth a credit.

This was a great book...Connelly created Harry with this story and whats amazing is, his first Harry book is as good as his last. There are a couple silly parts, for example, at one time Harry catches 2 detectives following him and he handcuffs them to a tree. Other than that its a great listen. Dick Hill is amazing as the narrator as well.

This was my first book from the author and I really enjoyed it. I liked the writing style which reminded me of Lee Child (Reacher series). Perfect balance of story telling and character building for my taste. Pretty much every part of the story was relevant, interesting and well told.

I admit that the narrator (Dick Hill) influenced my decision to try this one since he is one of my favorite narrators, but in the end I was glad I did. In fact I am going to grab another one right now.

You won't be disappointed.

Dick Hill's expert reading of this dud wasn't enough to save it and after nearly 8 hours of dull listening, I finally bailed. Perhaps there's an unexpected twist and a great payoff at the end of this mystery but the ride was so dull and predictable, even with a great reading, that I lost interest in reaching the destination. This novel is riddled with clichés, the main character isn't particularly likable OR interesting and the pacing didn't work for me. By the middle of the book I was just too bored to care what happened next.

If you've decided to start the whole series after hearing a few of the latter books, then here you are. A little too 80's cop movie for me (drug dealers, Vietnam, dirty cops...) but worth the time.

After watching the "Bosch" series on Amazon Prime, my husband requested we listen to this first Bosch audio book during a recent road trip. Even though this is my 2nd time through the series, this story was as enjoyable as my first listen. This time around I got to spend some time appreciating the excellent writing style of Michael Connelly. This author is among my list of top tier suspense writers of all time. His method of character development is through more action and dialog than back-story. A page does not go by where Bosch's character isn't being fleshed out through the small details of life. Connelly proves that attention to detail matters when writing a great series. Listen to the story -- you will see what I mean.

In my mind, Dick Hill's voice is Bosch. I am enjoying these first books with his voice.