A Darkness More Than Night

Slowly, his eyes came up and he looked through the kitchen window and out through the Cahuenga Pass. The lights of Hollywood glimmered in the cut, a mirror reflection of the stars of all galaxies everywhere. He thought about all that was bad out there. A city with more things wrong than right. A place where the earth could open up beneath you and suck you into the blackness. A city of lost light. His city. It was all of that and, still, always still, a place to begin again. His city. The city of the second chance. Bosch nodded and bent down. He closed his eyes, put his hands under the water and brought them up to his face. The water was cold and bracing, as he thought any baptism, the start of any second chance, should be.

So, what it's like, Terry? Being a father." ... "It's like having a gun to your head all the time. Because I know if anything happens to her, anything, then my life is over.

There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys -- prosecution and defense -- dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open court a judge could not possibly tell a joke that the lawyers did not laugh at.

McCaleb classified these cops as avenging angels. It had been his experience that these cop/angels were the best investigators he ever worked with. He also came to believe that they traveled closest to that unseen edge beneath which lies the abyss.

don’t worry, I’m not going to hold it against you when you end up wrong.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you look into the abyss the abyss looks into you. You know, all the clichés. They're clichés because they're true. You don't go into the darkness without it going into you and taking its piece.

He had been waiting a long time for a chance to come to this place. Years earlier he had spent a good bit of time in Florida on a serial case and the only good that had come out of it was his love of Cuban food. When he later transferred to the Los Angeles field office it was hard to find a Cuban restaurant that compared with the places where he had eaten in Ybor City outside of Tampa. Once on an L.A. case he’d come across a patrol cop who he learned was of Cuban descent. McCaleb asked him where he went to eat when he wanted real home cooking. The cop’s answer was El Cochinito. And McCaleb quickly became a regular. McCaleb decided that studying the menu was a waste of time because he had known all along what he wanted. Lechon asada with black beans and rice, fried bananas and yucca on the side and don’t bother telling the doctor.

He looked at the old case file he had pulled and still held in his hand. He put the phone down on the coffee table and leaned back on the couch and opened the file.

And you are forgetting the act of murder itself is evidence of aberrant thinking, of a dissembling personality.

Stay still, shithead. And get used to those cuffs. You are under arrest for murder, attempted murder and general conspiracy to be an asshole.

What about your play, Terry? Pushing past the little brother into the office. Like you didn’t think that would start some shit. You pushed the action with that little move and you know it.

He could feel her tiny heart beating. It seemed quick and desperate, like a whispered prayer.

Lastly, special thanks to Raymond Chandler for inspiring the title of the book. Describing in 1950 the time and place from which he drew his early crime stories, Chandler wrote, “The streets were dark with something more than night.” Sometimes they still are.

there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you look into the abyss the abyss looks into you. You know, all the clichés. They’re clichés because they’re true. You don’t go into the darkness without it going into you and taking its piece. Bosch

the folly of humankind leads us all to hell as our ultimate destiny.

the torment of the human soul in its inevitable journey to eternal damnation.

The advance coverage clearly delineated the case as a parable on unchecked Hollywood avarice and excess.

The unknown subject, McCaleb thought. So we meet again.

She was on a roll and everybody knew it. It was what cops and prosecutors called being in the tube. It was a surfing reference. It meant they had ridden the case into the water tunnel where everything was going smoothly and perfectly and was surrounding them in glorious balance.

Someone’s coming.” Terry McCaleb looked at his wife and then followed her eyes down to the winding road below. He could see the golf cart making its way up the steep and winding road to the

luck could be a fleeting thing. It had to be earned and then guarded with everything you had.

You are under arrest for murder, attempted murder and general conspiracy to be an asshole. - Harry Bosch

don’t have a profile ready for you yet, Jaye.” “Then what do you have?” “A suspect.