Police procedural

The Drop
Michael Connelly
Hachette
2011, pp 388
595

At  the core of The Drop’s  lies a novel concept in detective novels: new forensic technology on old crimes.

DNA fingerprinting is a comparatively new technique used to analyse miniscule traces of hair, skin cells or nails in recovered evidence and match its DNA to known criminals. Because the evidence in unsolved crimes is held in police custody for decades, it is possible to apply DNA fingerprinting to recover new clues for cases that were abandoned earlier.

Connelly starts his story with an interesting premise: what if DNA fingerprinting for an old crime points to a culprit who was only eight years old at the time? Would that discredit the technology itself, and call all such evidence into question?

Unfortunately, the trustworthiness angle of the puzzle is never given much coverage, as the protagonist, Harry Bosch, comes up with a logical solution quickly. What’s left is tracking down the killer. The clues lead him on the trail of a convicted criminal. But the suspect feels more like a victim himself.

In parallel with this story are two other strands. One is a case involving a politician’s son who apparently committed suicide. The politician is an old rival of Bosch’s, but specifically asks for him to be allotted the case because he’s good at his work. Things go awry, however, when the investigation begins to point towards the victim’s own family and business, and the politician begins to apply pressure on the investigation to go a certain way.

The other is Harry Bosch’s own life — over the course of the book, Bosch gets romantically involved with a doctor, and finds she has her own problems. Although Bosch has been involved with other women in the past, this story feels like it will span multiple books. He’s also coming to terms with having a teenage daughter, Maddie, in the house, after his ex-wife was killed in the previous book in the series. Maddie has her own ambition of being a cop, and Bosch actively supports this by giving her the real picture of what police work is like. It’s fairly obvious that this thread too has been going on through the previous books and will continue into the future.

Unfortunately, none of these three strands feel weighty enough to deserve a book-length story. This book is the 15th in the Harry Bosch series, and Connelly’s best ideas seem behind him. What interest he does generate is through the smaller, chapter-length puzzles that Bosch solves in each case. But, these would have worked better as a series of short stories.

Police stories such as the Bosch series are a comparatively modern form of detective fiction, with Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series being a pioneer of this form. Earlier detective stories were focussed on individuals, either because older generations of society had less faith in the police as an institution, or because the loner detective was a more romantic ideal. This sub-genre turns an investigation into a team effort that includes specialists in areas like forensics and pathologists along with the cops who have an entire department at their disposal. In India, at least, this seems very different from the perceived public opinion of the police, so such novels feel as fictional as, say, Perry Mason.

Connelly’s style is simple and direct, with very few verbal calisthenics. Leads that come up are tracked down, or put to use within the next few pages, and interrogations are fact-finding affairs with little subterfuge. There are no cunningly hidden narrative clues — casual mentions of relationships, photos on mantelpieces — that turn significant later. Bosch himself is a straight-talking career cop, which creates some tension with the other more politically-minded cops.

As a genre book, The Drop will not win over any new converts. In fact, it’s a bad starting point for someone interested in police procedurals. But for regular readers, and especially for followers of the Harry Bosch series, it’s a welcome addition to an engrossing, long tale.