Gripping crime thrillers

The Black Box, by Michael Connelly. Allen and Unwin. 403 pages. $40. Last to Die, by Tess Gerritsen. Bantam Press (Random House NZ). 328 pages. $37. Reviewed by David Manning Two popular and prolific crime writers, Michael Connelly and Tess Gerritsen, show they still have game in their latest novels.

The Black Box is Connelly’s 24th novel and 16th starring Detective Harry Bosch, who this time opens a cold case – the murder of a Danish photojournalist in an alley during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a case Bosch covered but was unable to investigate.

Again Bosch has to contend with political interference, an officious new boss who’s determined to force him to retire and an internal police inquiry.

All the time an unrelenting Bosch is trying to find the case’s ‘‘black box’’ – the piece of evidence, a person or a positioning of facts that helps explain what happened and why – even if it means seeking the answers in his own time.

For Gerritsen Last to Die is her 25th novel and 10th in her series starring Detective Jane Rizzoli and forensic pathologist Maura Isles. In separate ways they become involved in a macabre, ‘‘weird’’ case in which the parents of three children with no apparent links were killed in the same week.

The trio of traumatised adolescents are sequestered for safety and to heal in a private school in a remote, secure location – but the question is whether the threat to their lives comes from outside or within the school.

The Black Box is arguably not one of Connelly’s best novels but he is such a talented and compelling storyteller that his secondbest is superior to the best work of most other crime novelists.

Unlike Connelly’s stories, Gerritsen’s thrillers are more fanciful and off-the-wall, but in Last to Die she shows the skill to keep readers in her grip until the last page. Fans of both writers should be satisfied and look forward to Connelly and Gerritsen’s next novels.