The Black Echo

Eleanor Wish (nee Scarletti) joined the FBI because her brother’s service and ostensible death in the Vietnam War inspired her to go into law enforcement. She worked white collar crime in Washington, DC, for five years, on the fast track to promotion. When she learned that her brother did not actually die in Vietnam, she transferred to join FBI agent Rourke’s crew to get revenge on the people responsible for her brother’s murder.

Wish is in her early thirties, blonde, and attractive. She has elevated cultural tastes and doesn’t own a television. While partnered with Bosch, she follows his lead because she is unfamiliar with street-level policing. Wish at times seems to be clueless, even playing the damsel in distress for Bosch’s benefit—an act that is meant to gain Bosch’s sympathy and avoid his suspicion. In reality, she is playing Bosch and Rourke, pushing her revenge agenda. This deception makes Wish’s reasons for getting sexually and romantically involved with Bosch questionable; however, the novel makes it clear that she runs hot and cold during their relationship because she is wrestling with the need to lie to Bosch to get him to continue his investigation to bring Rourke down and with her genuine feelings for him.

Within the hardboiled formula, Wish is a take on the femme fatale archetype—a seductive woman who uses her femininity to control the men around her and lead the detective into danger. However, this novel somewhat subverts this trope: Wish is actually motivated by the desire for justice, and not money or power, and she does not use her sexuality to get her way. Through her, the novel considers the theme of Seeking Justice Versus Policing. This is why, despite the betrayal, in future books, Bosch marries Eleanor Wish, and they have a daughter named Madeline.

Meadows is the murder victim that kicks off the novel’s action. Twenty years ago, he served as a tunnel rat in the same unit as Bosch in the Vietnam War. Unlike the other tunnel rats, Meadows was not afraid of going into the tunnels. He was unusual, with a vacant stare and a penchant for violence. One time, Meadows was trapped underground for hours; when he emerged, he was wearing a necklace of ears that he’d cut off of Vietnamese soldiers he’d killed. Still, because the tunnel rats had each other’s backs, Bosch feels responsible for him.

Meadows never acclimated to postwar life—another way the novel addresses Vietnam Veterans’ Trauma. As Bosch describes it, “It was life above ground that scared him” (80). After his tour ended, Meadows re-upped in Vietnam; after the war, Meadows became a heroin user and trafficked heroin to the US under three corrupt Saigon police captains. He was never able to control his substance use disorder. In Southern California, he turned to a life of crime; eventually, his unreliability led to his partners killing him. Because Meadows was an unstable war veteran and killer and had a drug addiction, his murder is a mystery that nobody but Bosch would want to spend time and effort solving.

Edward “Sharkey” Niese is a 17-year-old runaway who is caught up in Meadows’s murder as a witness. Sharkey is small and white and has dreadlocks. He makes a living selling nude Polaroids of himself. He also teams up with two larger men, Arson and Mojo, to rob men that pick up Sharkey for ostensible sex work. They get away with it because none of the men they steal from want to report the crime to the police because it would mean that they solicited sex from a minor.

After learning that Sharkey witnessed the disposal of Meadows’s body and is a potential witness, John Rourke pretends to be a gay man interested in paying for sex to lure Sharkey to a dark place and kill him.

Sharkey represents the emotional heart of the novel. Where Bosch sympathized with Meadows because both served in Vietnam, Bosch identifies with Sharkey because they have similar upbringings. Bosch’s mother was also a sex worker; he sees the young, reactive Sharkey as reminiscent of Bosch at the same age. Sharkey might grow up to be a dangerous criminal, but in the context of Bosch’s case, he is primarily a victim. Sharkey’s death inspires Bosch to put everything he has into solving the case and make the people who killed Sharkey pay.

Irving is head of the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division. He is an intimidating figure even to those working for him, with a shaved head and a jaw line that stretches out wider than his ears. Irving hates acronyms and makes his employees spell out every phrase.

Connelly floats Irving as a possibly corrupt figure throughout the novel, but this ends up being a red herring—the character is simply an unpleasant and ultimately craven authority figure against whom Bosch must rebel. Irving is not related to the bank robbery plot at the heart of the mystery, but he is trying to get Bosch removed from the LAPD. He is the principal embodiment of the Insularity of the LAPD, warning at all times that the department’s first priority is not to protect the public and solve crimes, but to protect itself from the public.

Lewis and Clarke are Internal Affairs officers who are assigned to follow Bosch around and catch him doing anything illegal. They both have close-cropped hair and could be brothers. They have wide shoulders and wear similar styles of suits.

Connelly does not distinguish between them and portrays them both as dimwitted henchmen who only do what Irving tells them to do; their name is a sarcastic reference to the famed early-19th-century surveyors—unlike those adventurers, these cops find nothing and literally sleep on the job.

Rash and eager to get revenge on Bosch for disrespecting them, both are killed in the second bank heist—deaths that are not treated as tragedies.

Rourke heads an FBI unit in the Bank Robbery Division. When Rourke was a lieutenant in the US army during the Vietnam War, working as military police for the US Embassy in Saigon, he was the commanding officer of Meadows, Franklin, and Delgado. As a unit, they helped coordinate the trafficking of heroin to the US alongside Binh, Tran, and another corrupt Saigon police captain. While Rourke works for the FBI, he is corrupt and eager to steal diamonds from Tran and Binh. Wish thinks Rourke is “a lot like” Bosch (129): Both are no-nonsense war veterans, and both are being easily manipulated by her.

Bremmer is a crime reporter with the Los Angeles Times. Many police officers, including Bosch, trust Bremmer to be fair and discreet. Bremmer and Bosch have had a working relationship for a long time because Bremmer wrote the book on the Beauty Shop Slasher case that was eventually turned into a movie and TV show.

Connelly wrote The Black Echo while he was a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, so in some ways, Bremmer is a version of Connelly himself; certainly, Connelly uses his journalistic experiences to describe the minutiae of Bremmer’s work. However, at the end of the novel, Connelly demonstrates the limitations of relying on the press to achieve justice: When Bosch gives Bremmer a tip about Sharkey’s death, he knows that Bremmer’s article will have little effect on the cops who failed the teenager. Moreover, Connelly describes Bremmer as more concerned with his career than his role as a “watchdog for the police” (387).

Edgar is Bosch’s assigned LAPD partner. Edgar is a broad-shouldered Black man who dresses well and is good at his job. However, Edgar also has a side job selling houses, and he is only biding his time before he can retire from the LAPD and work in real estate full-time. Bosch respects Edgar but at times struggles to work with him because of their different levels of commitment to policing. Edgar is not willing to put in the same extra time as Bosch, but he is honest and cares for his partner. They become partners again in future Bosch novels.

Pounds is Bosch’s commanding officer in the Hollywood Division of the LAPD. His mocking nickname makes it clear that Pounds is a lightweight: His most distinguishing characteristic is that he is an ex-smoker who is quick to anger when anyone (probably Bosch) smokes in the office. Because Pounds is copied on all of Lewis and Clarke’s surveillance, he is one of the possible inside man suspects. However, all Pounds really cares about is making sure the FBI doesn’t steal the glory on the case and getting rid of troublemakers like Bosch.

Franklin and Delgado were tunnel rats in Vietnam who, like Meadows, worked for Rourke as military police in Saigon. After the war, together with Meadows, they turned to a life of crime in the US. Subsequently, they were recruited by Rourke to do the bank heists that form the novel’s plot.