Michael Connelly’s Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch was one of the characters who ushered in the era of realistic police detectives in the eighties and nineties. Far from being superheroes or specially gifted, these were seemingly normal men who laughed, wept, and dealt with relationships and office politics, even as they tried to solve cases.

The son of a prostitute, Bosch loses his mother when he is eleven, and spends some of his childhood in MacLaren’s Children’s Centre, where he witnesses (and is subjected to) a lot of abuse. This fills him with a seething rage against injustice and puts him firmly in the corner of the often unseen, unreported underdog. He is known for his temper, his love of nature, and his refusal to go by the book to make sure the guilty are brought to justice.

Unfortunately, these traits are largely missing in his twenty-sixth outing, The Hollow . Harry Bosch is now in his 70s.…