Harry Bosch has trust issues

Has Michael Connelly jumped the shark?* When local cops start flying off to Hong Kong, or some other exotic place, signal flares erupt like fireworks spelling out “Danger, Will Robinson.” I mean, sometimes flying saucers are involved (though, whew, not here).

Nine Dragons (Little, Brown, 384 pages, $27.99) begins mundanely, with series character Los Angeles Robbery/Homicide detective Harry Bosch having some mild partner problems. His partner, recently recovered from a gunshot wound, either bails early for home or finds reasons for why he should stay in the office while Harry works the streets. As problems go, it’s more annoying than serious; it feels like authorial busywork, something to occupy Harry’s attention until the real story takes off.

For years, since the L.A. riots, Harry has carried a matchbook from a small Asian-run liquor store in South Central, where Harry had taken refuge with the owner. In 9 Dragons, the owner is killed in what at first looks to be a robbery gone bad. Harry promises the family he will find the killer.

Harry’s investigation points toward the triads, the ancient Chinese crime syndicates. Very soon after, Harry learns that his daughter, who lives with her mother Eleanor in Hong Kong, has been taken by a triad, Harry warned off the case. So, of course, Harry hops a plane and sets off to rescue his daughter, with formidable help from his ex-wife, an FBI agent before she became a professional gambler. She has a new boyfriend, Sun Yee, and he’s along for the ride, too; Sun Yee is cool as iced fish.

Then, as things progress poorly in Hong Kong, Connelly shocks us, again. (Sorry, no spoilers here.)

Harry is dogged, if nothing else. Like Robert Crais’ Joe Pike — he of the arrow tattoos on his shoulders pointing forward — Harry is like a shark, constantly moving, circling his prey. At several points in the story, Harry says it’s more important to keep moving than to think things through; forward motion is all, action is all.

Trust, always in short supply in crime fiction, here becomes a central issue, perhaps the central issue. Harry is forced to trust people he normally wouldn’t. Though he would deny it, Harry has problems trusting Asians, lingering racism from his days as a Vietnam tunnel rat, so when the investigation springs leaks, Harry automatically distrusts David Chu, a detective working in the Asian crimes unit; Harry also distrusts Sun Yee, for pretty much the same reasons.

And the people he trusts without question are the ones he needs to look at closer. I should say no more.

While it may not be an official crime-fiction convention, it often seems that at least once per crime novel, the narrator feels compelled to remind the reader that coincidence isn’t something worth believing in. So, then, why does coincidence figure so crucially in the story? In fact, all that happens is, in essence, caused by a first cousin to coincidence: Someone’s actions — not directly related to the main story — causes everything else to follow, including more coincidences in the major, shocking action near the end.

Anyone for waterskiing?

* “Jumping the shark” is a TV reference used to describe out-of-the-ordinary characterizations that originated after an episode of “Happy Days” in which the Fonz donned swim trunks and jumped over a shark tank while on water skis. It was seen as a pathetic attempt to grab better ratings.

Randy Michael Signor is a free-lance writer who lives in Seattle.