The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"At Mulholland he was about to turn on red when he checked the traffic from the left and froze. He saw a coyote step out of the brush of the arroyo to the left of the roadway and take a tentative look around the intersection. [...] The mist rising from the arroyo caught the reflection of the street lights and cast the coyote in almost a dim blue light. And it seemed to study Bosch's car for a moment, its eyes catching the reflection of the stoplight and glowing. For just a moment Bosch believed that the coyote might be looking directly at him. Then the animal turned and moved back into the blue mist."

Michael Connelly's The Last Coyote (1995) is the fourth installment in his Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch series. Harry is at the nadir of his middle-age life. He has been put on an involuntary stress leave for attacking one of his bosses. He is required to do stress counseling; we meet him in the first chapter as he refuses to open to a psychologist. Due to an earthquake, his house has been condemned as uninhabitable, his romantic relationship is over. He is angry, despondent, and feels threatened by the hostile world.

To find a renewed sense of direction in life - and also to fight the demons of the past - he begins a private investigation of a never solved murder that happened over 30 years ago. Marjorie Lowe, a prostitute, was killed in 1961. She was Mr. Bosch's mother.

Bosch finds out that the then-district attorney, an influential political figure of that time, played an important role in the original investigation. It becomes obvious that some sort of cover-up must have occurred. We learn a lot about Bosch's childhood, his life with several sets of foster parents and in a youth hall. The plot is extremely complicated yet well constructed. Some twists at the end seem artificial, though, as if they were introduced just because the readers expect plot twists.

While I very much liked the author's prose in The Concrete Blonde (to be reviewed soon on Goodreads), I do not find the writing in Coyote remarkable in any way. I have been unable to find any other spectacular prose fragment to quote, besides the epigraph. To me, the scene of Bosch's interrogation by the Internal Affairs detectives lacks plausibility. The romantic thread is very sweet, yet also cliché; I was able to easily predict the trajectory.

To sum up, a good but not outstanding read, and a memorable image of Bosch -- like the coyote -- as a lone individual on the brink of extinction.

Two-and-three-quarter stars.


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