Attorney Mickey Haller is defending Da'Quan Foster, a former gang member who is accused of brutally murdering Lexi Parks, a popular city official. When Mickey's investigator is injured in what appears to be a motorcycle accident, Mickey asks Harry Bosch, his half-brother, to investigate. Harry is reluctant to work for the defense because of his many years working on the prosecution side when he was with the LAPD, but he believes that Foster is innocent. Titus Welliver does an excellent job narrating. His crisp reading is fast paced and keeps the listener engaged. He brings out Harry Bosch's laidback personality and his thoughtful analysis of the facts. Verdict Recommended for the mystery/thriller collection of all libraries. ["Readers who like David Baldacci's style and intricate plots will enjoy immersing themselves in Connelly's new offering": LJ Xpress Reviews 10/9/15 review of the Little, Brown hc.]-Ilka Gordon, Beachwood, OH © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In bestseller Connelly's masterly 20th Harry Bosch novel (after 2014's The Burning Room), former gang member Da'Quan Foster, a client of Bosch's half-brother, DA Mickey Haller, awaits trial for a rape and murder. The case appears to be a slam dunk for the prosecution, with Foster's DNA found at the crime scene, but Haller, who's convinced it's a setup, persuades Bosch, a retired homicide cop, to help prove his client's innocence. With assistance from his former LAPD partner, Lucia Soto, Bosch does some digging and finds some interesting links among a prostitution ring, Internet pornography, and a very expensive wristwatch. Drawing on his 30 years of experience and instinct, Bosch as usual investigates things his way, even when the case may lead inside the police department. Indeed, the notion of crossing resonates on different levels-the intersection of predator and prey, cops gone rogue, and for Bosch, the transition from one part of his life into something exciting and new. Agent: Philip Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

MICHAEL CONNELLY'S maverick cop, Harry Bosch, has been kicked off plenty of important police cases over his long career. But until now, he has never gone over to the dark side to work against the prosecution in a homicide case. In THE CROSSING (Little, Brown, $28), the forcibly retired (and terminally bored) Bosch, a former California detective, breaks faith by taking on a private investigation for his half brother, Mickey Haller. The slick defense lawyer has convinced Bosch that his client, a reformed gangbanger named Da'Quan Foster, is not guilty of murdering Lexi Parks, a well-liked city official who was bludgeoned to death in her bed. But the case still makes Bosch uneasy. "Did he miss the work so much that he could actually cross the aisle and work for an accused murderer?" he asks himself. Never mind that the detective is convinced of Foster's innocence. To his former colleagues, he's a traitor. As an investigator with the sheriff's department puts it to him: "You used to be legit. Used to be. Now not so much." Tough guy that he is, Bosch "could feel his face burning red with humiliation." Overcoming his shame, he vindicates himself by solving an unusually cerebral case that hangs on the provenance of an expensive watch, a $14,000 Audemars Piguet. Like a classic whodunit, the complicated mystery pivots on one small clue. An extra treat for the reader is being able to follow the case from the dual perspectives of the prosecution and the defense. As a career cop, Bosch is well versed in the professional tactics of a police investigation. (Even a casual reading of the tricked-up "discovery package" that every investigating officer is obliged to prepare for the defense attorney puts him in a good humor.) But Haller's vocational talents, being on the shady side, are more like the sleight-of-hand tricks of a con man, and once in a courtroom he suddenly acquires the skills of a magician. Brothers they may be, but at times they seem a lot like an ego and its id. RUTH RENDELL'S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS (Scribner, $26), is a deliciously diabolical tale on a favorite theme: one person's devouring of a weaker person's identity. Carl Martin is the little mouse that allows itself to be caught by the tail. He lives in a lovely house in London's Maida Vale that he inherited from his father. He recently published a successful novel, and the girl he loves has just moved in with him. Carl may be sitting pretty, but he's just the sort of weak-willed milquetoast Rendell enjoys tearing into little bits. On flimsy grounds, he feels responsible for a friend's death, and his unscrupulous tenant, Dermot McKinnon, being aware of Carl's guilty secret, proceeds to blackmail him in psychologically subtle ways. First, he stops paying the rent. Then, he starts taking over parts of the house. When Carl finally protests ("You're ruining my life"), Dermot points out, "It's you who's doing that." Loss of identity also figures in a parallel plot in which a cipher of a girl named Lizzie Milsom steals the trappings, if not the vivid personality, of a dead woman. All of these fragmented lives eventually intersect, propelled by a supporting cast of endearing eccentrics who, sadly, will not pass this way again. WHEN HEROES GO BAD, the earth trembles, as it does in THE GUISE OF ANOTHER (Seventh Street Books, paper, $15.95), Allen Eskens's cautionary story of guilt, redemption and damnation. As a Minneapolis police detective, Alexander Rupert was a prince of the city - Medal of Valor and all that - until he was caught up in a police corruption scandal that derailed his career and alienated his beloved older brother. "More than anything, he wanted to feel that pride again," seeing hope of salvation in the Putnam case, a police matter too easily dismissed as an accidental drowning at sea. But can he resist the temptations of warm flesh and hot money? Eskens's elegant but chilly prose, like winter in the blood, is well suited to this fiercely told morality tale (and its deeply cynical ending), which is sure to send all of us wretched sinners straight to hell. CHILDHOOD IS a perilous country in Lisa Ballantyne's psychological suspense novels, so bleak and hostile that even grown-ups hesitate to go there. "Margaret Holloway, deputy head teacher, mother, wife, did not know what had happened to her when she was a little girl, and she was terrified to find out." But return she does, in EVERYTHING SHE FORGOT (Morrow/HarperCollins, paper, $14.99), when a traffic pileup on a London highway traps her in her burning car until a hideously scarred stranger risks his life to save her. "The crash. ..." she struggles to explain to her husband. "It's made me remember things." These "things," she fails to add, relate to her rescuer, who lies hospitalized in a coma. Ballantyne makes no real mystery of the relationship between Margaret and her savior, choosing to tell their stories in separate but interlocking chapters. Taken individually, these biographical histories of Margaret and the man she knows as Maxwell Brown give structure to the narrative; taken together, they give it a living, beating heart.

Harry Bosch goes to work for the Lincoln lawyer. There's no reason why brothers can't work together, even if they're only half brothersunless one of them put in nearly 30 years at LAPD Robbery-Homicide before a suspension that led to retirement and the other works night and day to get crime suspects released. And defense attorney Mickey Haller can really use his half brother's help finding evidence that will back up his longtime client Da'Quan "DQ" Foster's claim that he didn't assault West Hollywood assistant city manager Lexi Parks in her home and beat her to death, because Bosch's former colleagues have damning DNA evidence DQ can't explain that links him directly to the victim, and a hit-and-run accident has sidelined Dennis "Cisco" Wojciechowski, Haller's regular investigator. Bosch (The Burning Room, 2014, etc.) has a million reasons not to cross over "to the other side of the aisle," but step by step, fearful that the real killer is still out there, he finds himself drawn into the case despite his reservations. The news that his alibi witness was murdered shortly after DQ was arrested both deepens his plight and makes his story more plausible, for Bosch if not for the cops, and he spends some time examining a couple of unhelpfully clean-swept crime scenes before he gets a hunch that the key to the case is a pricey Audemars Piguet watch that Lexi Parks sent off to be repaired and never picked upand that the killer he's looking for is actually a pair of killers. The deeper he digs, the more reasons he finds to regret having crossed to Haller's dark side and the more reasons to be skeptical, even fearful, of the LAPD. Solid, unspectacular, utterly engrossing work from the reigning master of the police procedural. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* Harry Bosch has been forced into retirement by his enemies within the LAPD, and he's not taking it well. As he sits in his house in the Hollywood Hills and looks down at the traffic, the slow moving river of steel and light, he knows that's where he belongs. His half-brother, lawyer Mickey Haller, star of Connelly's parallel series, offers Harry a way back into the game, but it comes at a high price: working for a defense lawyer after a career as a cop means going over to the dark side. Reluctantly, Bosch agrees to investigate the case against a former gang-banger seemingly turned straight, whose DNA was found on and in the body of a high-profile woman murdered in her bed. If Harry finds evidence suggesting the accused is guilty, he goes to the cops, mitigating somewhat the dark-side worries. What follows is a tour de force of criminal detection. Connelly painstakingly and brilliantly shows Bosch slogging after the truth, eventually recognizing that an expensive watch that the victim attempted to get repaired somehow holds the key to the case and then following this wispy filament of a lead on a circuitous path to the killers But the appeal here isn't all cerebral; the novel concludes with a stunning, bullets-flying set piece in which careful investigation turns suddenly to intense action, almost like a nuclear physicist's blackboard formulas exploding into atomic bombs. As always, Connelly's blackboard work is as precise as his finale is exciting. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With the popular and critically acclaimed TV series Bosch adding to Connelly's celebrity, his total-copies-sold figure of more than 60 million will soon need to recalculated, yet again.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2015 Booklist