The Black Echo

The novel often draws parallels between Bosch and the people whom he investigates—links that play on the novel’s interest in the ways law enforcement often mirrors criminality. Here, Bosch’s experience of Vietnam Veterans’ Trauma—which includes symptoms of PTSD, such as insomnia and claustrophobia, and possibly misguided loyalty to fellow tunnel rats—echoes the background of murder victim Meadows and bank robbery suspects Franklin and Delgado. All four men have ongoing connections to their tunneling days, and the involvement of each in the case is clearly tied to the deep connections they formed while in combat.

The comparison between law enforcement and criminals is strengthened further when we learn that Meadows tried but failed to join the LAPD. Instead, he ended up in and out of prison, like many of the men residing at Charlie Company. This biography plays on a classic trope in hardboiled literature: the idea that men coming back from war struggle to reintegrate into peacetime lives. After having seen true horrors, they become desensitized to violence and feel there is no moral code. When Bosch reads the veterans’ files, he recognizes that his life might have ended up the same way if he didn’t have the LAPD: “[H]ow thin the line was, the choice, between what he had done afterward and what Meadows did” (199).

There are also hints that Bosch had a similar childhood to Sharkey’s, and the reader will later learn that Bosch’s mother was also a sex worker. This parallel causes Wish to accuse Bosch of seeing himself in Sharkey and thus going easy on the young man; her accusation is seemingly correct—Bosch wants to purposefully scotch the results of his interrogation by hypnotizing Sharkey, which might provide more evidence and will definitely render his testimony inadmissible in court, thus protecting him from further involvement in the murder case. Through Bosch’s eyes, Sharkey appears as a victim despite his predation on gay men seeking sex workers: For Bosch, Sharkey’s home life in part justifies Sharkey’s criminal lifestyle. Connelly also portrays Sharkey through this lens: Sharkey’s interactions with Arson and Mojo make it clear that the larger men take advantage of Sharkey because of his small build, letting him play the bait. The question of Sharkey’s victimhood is central in the rest of the novel.

Setting is a crucial element of most noir and neo-noir fiction. One of the more iconic settings of this detective series is Bosch’s home: a cantilevered one-bedroom house in the Hollywood hills that looks out onto Glendale and Burbank. Bosch purchased the house after selling the rights to use his name in a TV miniseries based on one of his cases. The house is notable because any structure on stilts in a region known for earthquakes is always at risk of destruction, reflecting Bosch’s improvisational approach to his profession. He lives on the edge both literally and figuratively. He also admits that being able to look out over the valley, where he grew up, gives him a “sense of power” (59). Bosch feels ownership over LA, which is reflected in the way he lectures Wish: He talks down to her because he feels he knows how the city works better than anyone.

Questions about Seeking Justice Versus Policing arise here as we watch Bosch investigate. Bosch considers himself above police rules. Although he leans on his training to work cases, he ignores regulations when he feels that he knows better than the law. For instance, Bosch lets the pedophile he finds in Sharkey’s motel room go because he is convinced that arresting him would only waste time since the system won’t follow up: “It wasn’t worth it” (144). He also ignores laws protecting minors in interrogations because he believes he knows how to get Sharkey’s trust. In both situations, Bosch isn’t interested in simply ticking procedural boxes—he is specifically interested in pursuing justice and refuses to devote effort to futile gestures like arresting the pedophile and interrogating Sharkey by the book. The novel suggests that Bosch’s outlook partly stems from tracking the Dollmaker and the Beauty Shop Slasher, serial killers he pursued for the Robbery-Homicide Division. Because the substance of those investigations was entirely different from the current one—there, the murder victims were innocent girls, not accomplices to a crime—the cases had a clear sense of justice and the enemy was unambiguous; while Bosch’s cowboy shooting of the Dollmaker might have gotten him in trouble, readers do not find it morally questionable. Now, in the Meadows case, the lines are less obvious, making Bosch’s rule breaking easier to question.