Echo Park, by Michael Connelly

Echo Park is a fantastic crime novel that I thoroughly enjoyed. LAPD Detective Harry Bosch works for the Open Unsolved Unit, troubled by a case he couldn't close years ago. The Marie Gesto disappearance of 1993 haunts him. A man named Raynard Waits, a convicted murderer, has been coaxed into confessing to a string of murder cases in order to lessen his sentence. The Gesto case supposedly is one of them and Bosch is interested. Waits eventually leads Bosch, Waits' lawyer, Bosch's partner, and some others into the woods to find Marie's body, but he escapes and seriously injures Bosch's partner Kiz Rider. The story circles around Bosch and his eagerness to solve the Gesto murder. He has help from an FBI agent named Rachel Walling. Bosch discovers that the mans name is not Raynard Waits but really Robert Saxon, and he has had different names over the years, using them as aliases. Bosch finally confronts Saxon/Waits in his "foxhole", which is a place where he took his victims to die, and kills him. It doesn't end there though. Bosch finds out that his original suspect, Garland, was behind the killing in the end and that his father set up Waits as a cover up. The story is very captivating and is a great page-turner. The writing style shows that Connelly is adept and creating an unsettling and creepy atmosphere in the novel. At some points you could almost feel the characters emotions. I loved the read and plan on reading more Connelly in the future.