With many authors, fans have a certain expectation when they rush out to buy their books. For some, it’s about quirky characters delivering funny dialogue; for others its about action and adventure - then you have more genre specific aspects (horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and so on and so forth). But if you’re a Michael Connelly fan, when it comes to his long-running Harry Bosch series, you expect a good mystery/police procedural. His latest work, the thirteenth in the Bosch series, is entitled The Overlook, and fans need not worry because Connelly delivers the goods once again. First serialized (in sixten parts) in the New York Times and now available in hardcover, The Overlook picks up with Harry Bosh a couple months after the end of the last novel, Echo Park.

As usual, Connelly immediately pulls readers into the story from page one. Not only do you learn that Bosch is off the open-unsolved unit, but he’s also breaking in a new partner, Ignaccio “Iggy” Ferras. In typical Bosch fashion, he is having a hard time refering to his partner as Iggy. Bosch and Iggy are called out to a crime scene at the Mullholland Drive overlook. What they find is Stanley Kent, a physicist murdered execution-style, and it is at this point that Bosch is reunited with FBI agent Rachel Walling. But it’s not a personal visit, it’s professional. Walling and a contingent of other agents are there to take over the case from Bosch for reasons of national security.

Bosch doesn’t give up so easy. Walling is uncooperative in giving him information, but it is soon learned that the victim was involved with radioactive materials at his job helping cancer patients. Though not as long as Connelly’s previous novels, the shorter page count doesn’t take anything away from the complexity or suspense of this one. It’s simply one of those books you consume in one sitting, unfolding at such a fast pace you won’t realize how quickly the time went.