I loved the Amazon Instant Video series, so I sought out the first of this LA procedural. It's good on insider acronyms and police slang (one imagines!), but the plot is slow to get moving and the author has the proverbial cloth ear for dialogue. One might even suggest that he can't actually write for toffee, were it not for the somewhat inconvenient fact that he's a multi-squillionaire writer. Annoyingly. ( )

For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch — hero, maverick, nighthawk — the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal.

The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell. Now, Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city to the tortuous link that must be uncovered, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit.

Joining with an enigmatic and seductive female FBI agent, pitted against enemies inside his own department, Bosch must make the agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, as he tracks down a killer whose true face will shock him.

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Lone LAPD detective Harry Bosch must walk the line between criminals and crooked cops following the death of an old war buddy. Billy had been a fellow "tunnel rat"--fighting with Bosch in the nightmare underground war in Vietnam. But soon Billy's murder is linked to a bank robbery via complex tunnels beneath the bank.