The Drop

In the Open-Unsolved Unit, where detective Harry Bosch is investigating cases going back fifty years, what you pray for is a cold hit - when new technology matches old DNA evidence to someone who thought they'd gotten away with murder. For Harry, the thrill of that knock on the door, when justice finally catches up with a killer, is what he lives for. But when lab result link the brutal rape-murder of a teenage girl in 1989 to convicted rapist Clayton Pell, it's anything but the slam-dunk it seems. Pell's DNA was found on the victim - but, impossibly, he was only eight years old at the time. Harry needs to solve the mystery fast - or the validity of DNA evidence in dozens of cases should be challenged. Then suddenly Harry's got another mystery on his hands - and this one has danger written all over it. A man jumped - or was pushed - from a window at the Chateau Marmont. So far so simple - except that the victim's father is Councilman Irvin Irving, a man who's been intent on destroying Harry's career for years. And now Irving is insisting that Harry head up the investigation. As the two cases circle round each other like complex strands of DNA, Harry begins to uncover two of the city's deepest secrets: a killer operating for as many as three decades without being detected, and a political conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police departement.