Written by Michael Connelly, narrated by Titus Welliver — What a pleasure it is to enter the Los Angeles airspace of Harry Bosch and his half-brother Mickey Haller. Teaming up his two protagonists from the Bosch and Lincoln Lawyer series was a brilliant move by Connelly, and I’ve enjoyed every story of the two of them, fighting crime and for justice. In this latest double-outing, Connelly does not disappoint.

In The Crossing, Bosch takes the lead. He’s retired, not by choice, and rattling around his garage doing not very much. Haller approaches him about serving as an investigator on a difficult case he’s undertaken: a man accused of a brutal murder based on supposedly irrefutable DNA evidence, but Haller is convinced he’s innocent. Helping out the defense is ‘going over to the dark side’ in Bosch’s eyes and will be seen as a betrayal by all his former police department colleagues. Still, reviewing the case files does raise a few unanswered questions and, as we might expect, Bosch’s investigatory instincts soon outflank his reservations. It’s instructive to hear Haller’s reminders that, while Bosch may be on a search for the truth, the client remains uppermost.

Seeing both of them work in their respective roles – investigator and courtroom advocate – lets Connelly show off his characters’ different skill sets and keeps listeners to this audiobook version well entertained. I won’t go further into the plot, as you can read Crime Fiction Lover’s full review of the book here.

As to the effectiveness of the audio version, actor Titus Welliver’s excellent reading, combined with Connelly’s clear writing style, make it easy to keep track of the characters and the story. Welliver is super-prepared for this narration, as he played the character of Harry Bosch in the eponymous Amazon television series that premiered in 2015. We previewed the series here, and it made our top 10 crime shows of the year.

Orion
Audiobook
£24.99 (Audible), £35.56 (CD)

CFL Rating: 5 Stars