Switchblade

by Michael Connelly

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

In this original short story from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch seeks justice for the forgotten

In "Switchblade," an anonymous tip puts Bosch on a case that has remained unsolved for decades, the vicious stabbing of a teenage boy whose body was found in an abandoned Old Hollywood restaurant.

Cold cases are often the toughest: With no body, no murder scene, and no fingerprints, Bosch nevertheless gets lucky when DNA evidence from the murder weapon points to a known killer. But the DA insists that science alone is not enough - he needs the case to be bulletproof before he'll take it to court.

Determined to speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves, Bosch has one chance to wrench a confession out of a cold-blooded killer, or risk letting him walk free for good.

In this gripping, never-before-published story by "master of the crime thriller" (Huffington Post) Michael Connelly, Detective Harry Bosch quenches his thirst for justice and shows why he is "one of the most popular and enduring figures in American crime fiction" (Chicago Tribune).

Release date: January 14, 2014

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 32

Sample

The saying goes that hope springs eternal. So too with homicide. At the Los Angeles Police Department, a decade of successes by the Open-Unsolved Unit in closing old and sometimes forgotten murder cases created a steady stream of inquiries from the loved ones of victims. They came from around the world, from any place there was an unquenched desire for justice. Every day came the calls and e-mails and even visits. People asking about cases, hoping to spark the interest of the squad that investigated the past, seeking its hidden killers.


So high was the tide of hope for justice and closure that the OU Unit could not handle all the inquiries and still dedicate the time needed to the actual investigations. The department dug into the budget and hired a sorter—that is, a civilian employee who worked out of the OCP, the Office of the Chief of Police, and sorted through the dozens of requests that came in each week, sometimes each day.

The sorter’s name was Emily Robertson and her main tools for dealing with case inquiries were the department’s murder logs. These leather-bound books contained a chronological list of every murder committed in the City of Angels going back to 1896. One page, one murder. There were more than fifty of these somber volumes on the shelves behind Emily’s desk. When an inquiry came to her or was referred to her— whether it was a phone call, an e-mail, or a walk-in—it was Emily’s job to find the reference to the case in the murder logs. By confirming the case and the year of the crime, Emily then knew which detective team in the Open-Unsolved Unit she should refer the inquiry to for follow-up. Each of the eight teams in the unit was assigned specific years of responsibility. Any unsolved cases from its assigned years went to that detective team. . . .