Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories (Michael Connelly)

Suicide Run is a small collection of previously published short stories, released together for the first time, as an ebook.

One gets to read three of LAPD Homicide Division detective Heironymous (rhymes with “anonymous”) "Harry" Bosch's cases. The first two are fairly short, comprising a little more than half of the book; the third takes up the rest.

Suicide Run (originally published in Hollywood and Crime)

Harry Bosch, homicide detective, LAPD Hollywood Division, and his partner, Jerry Edgar, are called to a death scene. Lisbeth Grayson, 24, a wannabe actress from Portland, Oregon, is found dead in her apartment of an apparent suicide overdose. 

Things at the scene just don't add up – he  door is unlocked, the lights were left on, they find a note but no pencil.

Kizmin Rider, computer cop who wants to be a detective, helps him. She finds a connection – The Hollywood & Vine Studios. Lisbeth and five previous young actress suicides had their head shots taken by photographers from the studio who rent space by the hour.

That's all the lead they need to solve the case.

Cielo Azul (originally published in Dangerous Women)

This story is told during Harry's drive to San Quentin to see Victor Seguin, a stage builder biding his rapidly diminishing time on Death Row for murdering a teenage girl. Harry wants to make one last appeal to Seguin.

Seguin's case began 10 years earlier on Mulholland Drive in the Santa Monica Mountains, just north of Hollywood, where a 15-year-old Hispanic girl was found strangled to death. It was a tough case, until the deputy coroner came up two leads, and an FBI criminal profiler help identify and find Seguin.

Facing lethal injection in a few days, Seguin has a chance for partial redemption, if he only identifies the girl Harry has dubbed "Cielo Azul" (Blue Sky).

One-Dollar Jackpot (originally published in Dead Man's Hand)

Thirty-eight-year-old television poker player Tracey Blitzstein is found shot to death in her own car, in her own driveway. Her husband, David, also a poker player, says she'd called and told him she'd won $6,000 at a card casino in Commerce.

Harry takes over the case from Pacific Division, and fingers the husband as the prime suspect. Something about his alibi just doesn't add up. It becomes a battle of wits versus ego. Guess which one wins out.

The stories in Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories aren't complicated, and are good for a bedtime read. You can do the stories one at a time; they're all very straight up. Easy reading, entertaining, but not intriguing.

Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories (2011)

Michael Connelly

Little, Brown & Company, Hachett Book Group ($2.99 Kindle)

ISBN-13: 978-0316204248