Connelly’s ‘Narrows’ a solid compelling tale

Safety and the danger zone converge at “The Narrows,” where the surface hides what lurks beneath. It’s here, in this shadowy sphere, that detective Harry Bosch toils.

Just like his perennial hero Bosch, best-selling author Michael Connelly doesn’t play it safe. Sure, Bosch has been the lead in 10 of his 14 novels, but Connelly ventures into unfamiliar terrain in each of his crime fictions. Rather than work off a template, he offers a different approach from book to book.

In “The Narrows,” Connelly takes a further step by combining a solid, consuming tale about Bosch with the characters from 1996’s “The Poet,” one of his finest novels not from the Bosch series. On the surface, the idea ventures just close enough to being a gimmick to grab attention. But Connelly, often called this generation’s Raymond Chandler, didn’t stake his well-respected career on gimmicks.

The engrossing premise quickly evolves into a compelling, solidly plotted story that moves at a breakneck pace. Along the way, Connelly continues to burrow into his characters, unearthing their strengths and weaknesses, stripping down their fears and desires.

In “The Poet,” a crime-beat journalist was pulled into a labyrinth when his estranged twin brother, a cop, supposedly commits suicide. A satisfyingly intense thriller, “The Poet” addressed questions of identity, making peace with oneself and the incongruities of justice.

“The Narrows,” which picks up a part of “The Poet’s” story years later, packs a wallop as it looks at fears, safety and, ultimately, making the world right.

Bosch, now nearly three years into his retirement from the LAPD, is drawn into “The Narrows” when a widow asks him to look into her husband’s death. She doesn’t believe his death was natural and fears he may have been murdered. Bosch’s case will intersect with the FBI when agent Rachel Walling, once a rising star in the bureau, is pulled back into tidying up loose ends of “The Poet” case. Bosch and Walling team up to follow a trail that takes them from L.A. to Las Vegas, the “dangerous beauty” of the Nevada desert and a town of bordellos that operate out of trailers.

Intricately plotted, “The Narrows” excels in creating an interlocked structure that perfectly melds two of Connelly’s worlds. The taut suspense is matched only by the surprises that he pulls out, beginning with the jaw-dropping first three chapters. One should definitely read “The Poet” first before going into “The Narrows.”

Connelly’s Bosch series shows no signs of fraying at the edges because the author continues to explore new avenues inside the character. Bosch fights his own demons as much as he does crime. Connelly is one of the few authors who can let his character talk about his crime-solving “mission” and its effect on his life without making it sound trite or lame. Bosch also has an even bigger challenge as he wrestles with trying to be a father; the scenes with him and his daughter are emotion-laden and real, sentimental without being cloying, adding a new complexity to his already complex psyche.

Connelly has always made the scenery a large part of Bosch’s interior landscape, the environs shaping who he is as a detective and a man. “The Narrows” refers to the confining and shallow canals of the concrete-encased Los Angeles River, “the narrows” where the rapids are the wildest and most deceptive. As Bosch knows, the way a person acts in “the narrows” defines him.

With each novel, Connelly has dipped into “the narrows” and along the way help redefine the genre.