The Wrong Side of Goodbye

The Wrong Side Of Goodbye is the 29th novel by American crime author Michael Connelly, and the nineteenth novel featuring Los Angeles Police Department detective Harry Bosch. It was published in 2016.^[1]

Plot summary

This novel finds semi-retired Harry Bosch with two investigations. As a private detective he is summoned by billionaire Whitney Vance. The elderly, never-married Vance wants Bosch to track down an old girlfriend to know if he has an heir to whom he can leave his fortune. As a volunteer part-time officer for San Fernando, Bosch is involved in the search for a serial rapist.

Harry investigates and finds Vance actually had a son, Dominick Santanello, whose mother was Vibiana Duarte. Vibiana was Whitney Vance's lover back in the fifties. Santanello was killed in Vietnam, though, so Bosch has to inquire further. He discovers Dominick had had a daughter from another Latino woman, who is named Vibiana Veracruz after her grandmother. Vibiana Veracruz is alive and active as an artist and a sculptor. Bosch receives, in the mail, a will hand written by Vance. He discovers that this will was rewritten by Vance's assistant, Ida Forsythe, to include herself in the will. She eventually kills Whitney when Vance requests she retrieve the will, which would result in the discovery of her chicanery. Bosch figures out that Ida falsified the will and killed Vance. Eventually Vibiana Veracruz receives an unstated portion of the heritage.

The parallel crimes Harry is investigating are those perpetrated by a serial rapist who they have code named The Screen Cutter. Bosch unveils the rapist to be one of their former cop detectives named Dockweiler. In an earlier force reduction Dockweiler had been transferred to city code enforcement. Bosch shoots and wounds Dockweiler, who has the police chief and the police captain captive. He then has to find and rescue Bella Lourdes, Harry Bosch's cop partner whom Dockweiler had abducted and imprisoned.

References