History Literature / CityOfBones2002

Bosch gets a call out on New Year's Day when a citizen calls the cops to tell them that his dog found a human bone. When the bone is confirmed to be human, Bosch has a cold case that is a couple of decades old. Some good detective work and an old surgical scar on the skull confirms the victim to be Arthur Delacroix, a 12-year-old boy who disappeared without a trace in 1980. Further investigation reveals a tragic story of a horribly broken Delacroix family. In the meantime, the fifty-ish Bosch has a new chance at love with Julia Brasher, an LAPD uniform cop.

* AbusiveParents: Played with. We find out towards the end that it was the ''sister'', not the father, who was abusing the long-dead Arthur.

* AllForNothing: Bosch's noble effort to save Stokes from PoliceBrutality after Brasher is shot comes to nothing in the end: after Stokes becomes their suspect in the bones case, he winds up dead at the hands of the LAPD.

** At the end, Bosch tries to turn Mrs. Waters into one, telling her to "take care of" the kids Trent had been supporting, implicitly and indirectly blaming her for Arthur's death.

* BulletproofVest: It's mentioned in passing that Brasher is wearing hers when she is shot, but the bullet ''just'' misses it.

* ButNowIMustGo: Bosch at the end, burnt out by police work. By the next book, he's regretting it.

* CigaretteOfAnxiety: Bosch needs a smoke after Brasher is shot. He takes one of Stokes'.

* CowboyCop: Julia's partner Edgewood nearly kills Stokes after hr death and when they go after Stokes a second time (after new evidence turns up) does shoot him dead under questionable claims of self-defense.
* DeceasedFallGuyGambit: Irving wants to pin the dead boy in the bones case on Trent, who has conveniently committed suicide. From his perspective, this solves two problems: it closes an unlikely-to-be-closed case, and it shifts attention away from the leak in the department which created the PaedoHunt which caused Trent to kill himself. He thinks better of it.
* DisposableWoman: Julia Brasher exists, and is killed off, to give Bosch something to feel bad about.
* DivorceIsTemporary: Where Bosch was [[Literature/ADarknessMoreThanNight the last time we saw him]]. We learn that earlier the day he met Brasher, he decided to move on.

* DownerEnding: The shattered remants of the Delacroix family don't say anything to each other at the funeral and go their separate ways, and Harry Bosch, grief-stricken after Julia's death, quits the LAPD.

** It's established early on that Arthur Delacroix was a skateboarding enthusiast, and later he is said to have owned a pretty valuable skateboard. In the end it turns out that's why he was killed; one of his friends [[EvilIsPetty bashed him in the head with the skateboard, because he wanted it]].

-->''"Subperi--how do you spell that?" Bosch asked''

* OnlyAFleshWound: Averted. Julia Brasher is shot in the shoulder. The bullet ricochets, and she rapidly bleeds to death.

* ParentalIncest: Samuel Delacroix routinely abused his young daughter Sheila.
* PoliceBrutality: Upon seeing Brasher shot:

* PromotionNotPunishment: Bosch is offered a job back at Robbery-Homicide Division more than 10 years after having been demoted from same. He chooses to retire instead.

** Later, after Bosch receives word of his promotion to RHD, she does everything she can to ensure Harry can get the bones case closed before he leaves.
* RippedFromTheHeadlines: Forensic anthropologist Golliher states that one of the cases he has worked on previously was the World Trade Center.
* ScarSurvey: Julia Brasher asks Harry about his scars after sex. He has a scar from a knife wound suffered in the Vietnam War, and a bullet scar which he suffered during the novel ''The Black Echo''. Bosch worries that it lead indirectly to Brasher's death.
* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: Bosch, after Brasher is shot, takes Stokes out of harm's way for fear of what the other cops might do to him.

* TemptingFate: Bosch says Stokes is "nothing" to his case, "a zero." Turns out, ''he'' killed Arthur Delacroix.

* TwistEnding: {{Foreshadowing}} notwithstanding, when Harry pulls the pin, it's still quite a shock.

* WhamLine: "He could be charged under the felony-murder law."

* DownerEnding: The shattered remants of the Delacroix family go their separate ways, and Harry Bosch, grief-stricken after Julia's death, quits the LAPD.

** Possibly unintentional given the long time frame involved, but the case Harry is on at the open is a suicide who appears to have changed her mind. At the end of this novel, Harry "pulls the pin" on his career with the LAPD, a decision he decides several novels later was premature.

* InsistentTerminology: Set ''decorator'', not set ''designer''. There's a difference.

* PopCulturalOsmosisFailure: An amusing one when Bosch wonders what religion forbids coffee. While Sheila Delacroix isn't a Mormon, the "no caffeine" rule is one of the things about Mormonism that most people know. That someone as generally well-informed about the world around him as Bosch doesn't is pretty funny. He also [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TrunkMusic doesn't know one of the most famous Eric Clapton songs of all time]], so it's fully in-character.

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!!Tropes:

* WhamLine: "He could be charged under the felony-murder law."