Line #14 Literature/TheWrongSideOfGoodbye


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wrong_side_of_goodbye.png]]
2	''The Wrong Side of Goodbye'' is a 2016 mystery novel by Creator/MichaelConnelly. It is the 21st novel in his long-running series about LAPD detective Literature/HarryBosch.
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4	Except that Harry Bosch isn't an LAPD detective anymore. He was forced into retirement two years ago at the end of ''Literature/TheBurningRoom'', and has been at loose ends ever since. Now 66 years old, and having won a wrongful termination suit against the LAPD, Harry is now working part-time as a private detective. He takes as a client one Whitney Vance, a very wealthy and very frail elderly man. Vance, who is aware that he has little time left, gives Harry a job: find the Mexican servant that Vance impregnated when he was a young man. Vance, who has no legitimate heirs, wants Harry to find out if he has any descendants.
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6	Meanwhile, Harry is also working part-time for the police in San Fernando, a tiny independent enclave completely within the city of Los Angeles. The SFPD has a big problem on their hands in the person of a SerialRapist who is attacking women within their own homes, called the "Screen Cutter" because he gains access by cutting the screens on doors.
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8	Literature/MickeyHaller, star of his own series of Connelly novels, is a supporting character.
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10	----
11	!!Tropes present in this work:
12	* ContinuityNod:
13	** Harry got his job as a reserve officer in San Fernando because the local chief really hated Harvey Pounds way back in the day and was amused at the story of Bosch throwing Pounds through a window. Pounds is a Bosch antagonist in the early novels up through ''Literature/TheLastCoyote'', and the thrown-through-a-window incident has been referenced many times in various Bosch books.
14	** Harry tells is daughter that he no longer eats Vietnamese food, a fact first established in the very first Connelly novel, ''Literature/TheBlackEcho''.
15	** Whitney Vance knows about Harry because he read in the newspaper about Harry's case with "that doctor and the shootout." That's a reference to the prior Connelly novel, ''Literature/{{The Crossing\|2015}}''.
16	** It turns out that both Harry and Vance's son, Dominic Santanello, attended the same USO show in 1969. One of the performers was Quentin [=McKinzie=], a saxophonist--the old man that Harry is taking saxophone lessons from in ''Literature/LostLight''. That particular USO show was also referenced in short story "[[Literature/AngleOfInvestigation Christmas Even]]".
17	** Whitney Vance's probate attorney is identified as Cecil Dobbs, a major character in ''Literature/TheLincolnLawyer'', where he greatly irritates Mickey Haller.
18	** The judge that Harry calls to get a search warrant is John "Shootin'" Houghton, last mentioned fourteen years previously in ''Literature/{{City of Bones\|2002}}''.
19	* CurtainCamouflage: A potential victim notices the Screen Cutter hiding behind a curtain in her house and hits him in the face with a broom.
20	* {{Defictionalization}}: Zig-zagged in-universe; it's revealed that ''Film/TheLincolnLawyer'' was a nonfiction docudrama and Creator/MatthewMcConaughey had not approached Literature/MickeyHaller about a sequel just yet.
21	* DistantPrologue: Starts with a soldier going down in a helicopter crash in Vietnam, before jumping to the present day.
22	* DownerBeginning: A young soldier dies in Vietnam when his helicopter is shot down.
23	* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Harry's investigation reveals that Vibiana Duarte hanged herself in 1951, less than a year after Vance abandoned her.]]
24	* EverythingIsRacist: Maddie accuses her father of racism for not eating Vietnamese food. Harry explains that he hasn't eaten Vietnamese food for a long time, which has nothing to do with racism.
25	* ForgingTheWill: [[spoiler:It turns out that Vance's loyal assistant killed him, after forging a will in which he left her $10 million from his enormous fortune.]]
26	* GlorifiedSpermDonor: Abigail Turnbull doesn't think much of Vance's search for his child, saying, "He abandoned Vibby and he abandoned his son."
27	* HappilyAdopted: [[spoiler:Dominic and Olivia. Dominic was curious for a time about his true parentage but didn't really press the issue. Olivia, for her part, had zero interest in knowing about her parentage. As far as she was concerned, the Santanellos were her real parents, as her birth parents clearly didn't love her or want her.]]
28	* HeritageDisconnect: [[spoiler:Dominic was raised in a predominantly white neighborhood. However, it wasn't until after discovering his true parentage to Vibiana Duarte that he decided to be more in touch with his Latino side, going as far as attending a Chicano pride event where he met his girlfriend, Gabriela.]]
29	* IAmNotYourFather: [[spoiler:Olivia [=McDonald=] explains to Harry that, as she and Dominic Santanello were growing up, they noticed that their darker skin complexion and facial features were vastly different from that of their white Italian-American parents, and suspected that something was off about them. When they confronted their parents, they admitted that both Olivia and Dominic were adopted.]]
30	* OmnidisciplinaryLawyer: Literature/MickeyHaller. Usually a criminal defense attorney, was working in foreclosure law around the time of ''Literature/TheFifthWitness'', hired by Harry in this novel to do probate law (Vance's will). Lampshaded when Harry wonders how much Haller knows about probate, only for Haller to shoot back, "Have case, will travel." He promises to get help with anything he doesn't know.
31	* PersonalEffectsReveal: Harry is combing through Dominic's Army footlocker, undisturbed for nearly half a century, when he gets his big break--[[spoiler:some photos that turn out to be Dominic's girlfriend and unborn child]].
32	* ShoutOut: The whole being-hired-by-a-rich-guy-to-handle-something-related-to-his-kid is a time-honored shout-out to Raymond Chandler's ''Literature/TheBigSleep''. [[{{Literature/Spenser}} Robert B. Parker]] used it a couple of times, too.
33	* SomeoneToRememberHimBy: [[spoiler:Harry's investigation reveals that Dominic Santanello fathered a child--Whitney Vance's grandchild--before he was killed in Vietnam.]]
34	* TakeThat: Harry takes an indirect swipe at then President-elect Donald Trump, specifically about his proposed border wall.
35	* TitleDrop: Harry learns that [[spoiler:Vibiana Duarte killed herself eight months after Vance abandoned her]].
36	--> "Vance had left her on the wrong side of good-bye, and what happened in June brought about what happened in February."
37	* TokenMinority: In the backstory, Dockweiler, bitter about Bella Lourdes keeping her cop job when he didn't, says that Bella is a "twofer" token minority (Latina, female). Then he asks if her being a lesbian makes her a threefer.
38	* TwoLinesNoWaiting: Increasingly true of later Connelly novels. The two cases Harry's working--the fate of Vance's girlfriend and child, and the San Fernando serial rapist--never intersect.
39	* UnexpectedInheritance: [[spoiler:Whitney Vance's great-grandaughter is pretty surprised to find out that she's the heir to an unfathomably huge fortune.]]
40	* VorpalPillow: [[spoiler:Everybody is surprised when the seemingly unnecessary autopsy of Whitney Vance reveals that rather than dying of old age, he was smothered to death by a pillow.]]
41	* WeUsedToBeFriends: Harry and the entire Los Angeles Police Department, after he filed his wrongful termination suit. He is now ''persona non grata'' with the LAPD, except for a few old friends like his last partner, Lucia Soto.

Context Literature / TheWrongSideOfGoodbye