After a three-year hiatus, Bosch has returned to the LAPD and is assigned to the Open-Unsolved unit, re-examining cold cases. The case that he and partner Kizmin Rider first pick up is the 1988 murder of a 16-year-old girl, Rebecca Verloren. A DNA hit on the gun used to commit the murder has yielded the name of Roland Mackey, a low-life hoodlum and white supremacist. Bosch and Rider pursue their investigation and discover a tangled mystery including an LAPD cover-up that may or may not involve Bosch's old department nemesis, Deputy Chief Irvin Irving.
Tropes:
- Chekhov's Gunman: Roland Mackey's alibi is that he was being tutored at the time of the Verloren murder. It turns out that his tutor was the murderer.
- Continuity Nod: Bosch and Rider pay a visit to Thelma Kibble, parole officer and character from non-Bosch novel Void Moon. Bosch sees a picture of Void Moon protagonist Cassie Black in Kibble's office and realizes that he met her a year before, in The Narrows.
- Friends with Benefits: Bosch has a night of casual sex with LAPD makeup artist Vicki Landreth.
- Law of Conservation of Detail: A whole chapter has Bosch and Rider tailing Roland Mackey after Mackey leaves work, eventually following Mackey to a stalled car that he has been summoned to tow. Guess what? Something important happens.
- Mugging the Monster: Two homeless men attempt this on Bosch. One of them sees the look in Harry's eyes and backs down before it can end very badly.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Bosch is nauseous after he realizes that his play with the newspaper story led directly to Roland Mackey's death.
- Never One Murder: The mystery deepens when Roland Mackey, Bosch's prime suspect, is run down and killed by someone who wanted to silence him.
- No Name Given: As is tradition for Harry Bosch novels, the chief of police goes unnamed. Even in this novel, when the chief takes a personal interest in Bosch and is responsible for him getting his job back.
- Real-Person Cameo: Rick Jackson and Tim Marcia, two real LAPD cops who apparently serve as advisors to Michael Connelly, appear in this book as cops working with Harry Bosch.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The chief of police, who is personally responsible for re-hiring Harry Bosch.
- Resigned in Disgrace: A variation. In a parallel to Harry coming out of early retirement, Irving is forced to take early retirement by the new Chief of Police after his past machinations finally come back to bite him in the ass. Even better, despite all his political savvy, Irving genuinely didn't see this coming.
- Revisiting the Cold Case: Now Harry Bosch's full-time job in the Open-Unsolved unit. His first case is the long-unsolved murder of a 16-year-old girl, which the unit seizes on after they get a DNA hit.
- Shout-Out: Rider says that James Ellroy picked out the crime scene photos that decorate the walls in the Open-Unsolved office.
- Shrine to the Fallen: Rebecca Verloren's mother has left her room untouched, other than dusting, since her daughter's death. This eventually proves crucial to the climax as Bosch discovers a vital clue, a fingerprint, on the floorboards of Rebecca's bed.
- Teacher/Student Romance: One of these, one with a very dark ending, is the solution to the mystery.
- 10-Minute Retirement: Well, three years. But after finding life as a PI unsatisfactory over novels Lost Light and The Narrows, Bosch is back on the job with the LAPD.
- Title Drop: Pratt calls Open-Unsolved "the closers" because their mission is to close old cases.
