The Black Echo

The novel’s structure is highly regimented. Each chapter of The Black Echo is an account of one day, from Bosch waking up to him calling it a night. At the same time, Connelly plays with the reader’s experience, including point-of-view shifts that show us scenes from Sharkey’s, Irvin Irving’s, and Lewis and Clarke’s points of view. These different perspectives establish the theme of surveillance, prevent Bosch from completely dominating the narrative, and heighten realism by showing us the motivations and reasoning that drives other characters. Connelly foregrounds authenticity in other ways as well, using his experiences as a crime reporter. The novel is full of logistical details, from accurate descriptions of LA’s highways and streets to the specifics of the software and other resources Bosch uses to research past cases. Connelly portrays detective work as a series of small errands and occasional paperwork—a convincing depiction that fits the grit required of the hardboiled genre.

Part of the appeal of the detective genre is that readers get to try to solve the case alongside the brilliant investigator. To enable this to happen, authors use several tropes that Connelly employs here. For example, the reader is bombarded with dozens of possible clues without being told which clues are important. Following the rules of mystery fiction, Connelly gives the reader everything they need to solve the mystery themselves but also includes red herrings—dead ends in the investigation. Some of the clues are requested in these early chapters but don’t arrive until later, like the tox report on Meadows’s body or the military file that Bosch requests from St. Louis. These could be dead ends, or they could be missing pieces to the puzzle. At the same time, Connelly makes sure that readers understand that the details matter and will fit together in a satisfying solution: Whenever Bosch encounters a seeming coincidence, he insists that he doesn’t believe in them. The implication is that the novel is tightly plotted and nothing Connelly describes is random.

Bosch’s flashbacks to the Vietnam War establish him as someone whose identity is closely tied to the experience of Vietnam Veterans’ Trauma. He struggles with nightmares, insomnia, and PTSD related to his time fighting as a “tunnel rat”; at the Mulholland dam crime scene, he fights off symptoms of PTSD as he climbs into the pipe to examine Meadows’s body. Searching Meadows’s home, Bosch is “embarrassed” by his smile in the photo of his old unit (34)—this facial expression seems too naïve for the reality that the soldiers were “like people trapped in wrecked cars” (64). Because the victim of the case is also a Vietnam War veteran—and, more specifically, a fellow tunnel rat—the novel doubles down on the motif of claustrophobia-triggering confined spaces. There are tunnels throughout. Some are literal, like the water pipe in which Meadows’s body is found, the tunnel dug underneath the bank vault, and the one in Timbuk2 in Bosch’s flashback; others are more figurative, like Bosch’s tunnel vision. In both cases, tunnels represent disorientation, the terror of the hidden, and dangerous underworlds—secret activity beneath the surface.

The novel juxtaposes Bosch’s detective instincts with the motivations of other police officers. His partner, Edgar, wants to stay out of trouble and focus on his second job as a real estate agent. The cops at the crime scene want to take short cuts and call it an early day. In contrast, one detective calls the focused and unrelenting Bosch a “one man army” (43), suggesting that Bosch tends to go it alone rather than work with the rest of the team. The expression is meant as an insult: A major theme in the novel is the pressure most officers feel to preserve the Insularity of the LAPD. Often, there is tension between the ostensible goal of police work—solving crimes—and the actual goal of police supervisors—protecting the department. Because Bosch does not feel the same sense of blinkered loyalty, he poses a threat to the institution. He only wants to work the case in front of him, even if that means making enemies.

The contrast between Bosch and other officers also feeds into the novel’s interest in the parallels between law enforcement and criminal behavior, asking readers to consider Seeking Justice Versus Policing. During the Dollmaker case, Bosch was suspended for shooting the suspect without first confirming that the suspect was armed. When Wish asks whether Bosch knew the Dollmaker was unarmed, she is wondering whether his reputation as someone who decides to ignore police procedure in the name of personal justice is legitimate. Because Bosch does not clarify what he was thinking when he shot the Dollmaker, this becomes a secondary mystery and running theme in the novel. Has Bosch broken the law to dispense vigilante justice? Is he entitled to do so? At the same time, Bosch is not the only officer pushing at the boundaries of procedure: The FBI misuses their authority to trump up an internal investigation into Bosch simply to kick him off the case, while Irving deploys the power of Internal Affairs and his loyal underlings Lewis and Clarke to pursue a personal vendetta against Bosch.