ba395ce
|
That's justice," she said, nodding at the statue. "She doesn't hear you. She doesn't see you. She can't feel you and won't speak to you. Justice, Detective Bosch, is just a concrete blonde."
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justice
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Michael Connelly |
643c88a
|
I'm going to have to go out there. She had a mother and a brother. See who's still around and can look at this thing." "Harry, you sure you--" "You think I have a choice?"
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Michael Connelly |
4773926
|
The civilized people in the world, the ones who hide behind culture and art and politics... and even the law, they're the ones to watch out for. They've got that perfect disguise goin' for them, you know? But they're the most vicious. They're the most dangerous people on earth.
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Michael Connelly |
98fe6b4
|
The gravel road widened into a large turnaround where three similar looking and designed brothels sat waiting for customers. They were called Sheila's Front Porch, Tawny's High Five Ranch and Miss Delilah's House of Holies. "Nice," Rachel said as we surveyed the scene. "why are these places always named after women -- as if women actually own them?" "You got me. I guess Mister Dave's House of Holies wouldn't go over so well with the guys." ..
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slavery
women
degradation
brothels
marketing
prostitution
exploitation
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Michael Connelly |
e7ed70c
|
it's like the laws of physics--for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. If you go into darkness, the darkness goes into you. You then have to decide what to do with it. How to keep yourself safe from it. How to keep it from hollowing you out.
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Michael Connelly |
0f00f6c
|
Nobody in this world is who they say they are. Nobody. Not when they're in their own room with the door shut and locked. And nobody knows anybody, no matter what they think... The best you can hope for is to know yourself. And sometimes when you do, when you see your true self, you have to turn away.
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Michael Connelly |
71f0630
|
There was still chicken on the bone but sometimes you just have to push the plate away.
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Michael Connelly |
8e86870
|
Everybody counts or nobody counts.
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Michael Connelly |
aa9817b
|
Bosch counted twenty-two names and it made him miss the old Los Angeles Times. In 1993 it was big and strong, its editions fat with ads and stories produced by a staff of some of the best and brightest journalists in their field. Now the paper looked like somebody who had been through chemo--thin, unsteady, and knowing the inevitable could only be held off for so long.
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Michael Connelly |
7d93aef
|
There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys -- prosecution and defense -- dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open court a judge could not possibly tell a joke that the lawyers did not laugh at.
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opportunism
pandering
power
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Michael Connelly |
c1a3b64
|
Politicians could talk about building walls and changing laws to keep people out, but in the end they were just symbols. Neither would stop the tide any more than the rock jetties at the mouth of the port did. Nothing could stop the tide of hope and desire. Bosch
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Michael Connelly |
6398ec9
|
I put my hand down below the table to check my zipper. You have to stand before a jury only once with your fly open and it will never happen again
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humor
zipper
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Michael Connelly |
9d98fcd
|
Everybody's got a cage that keeps out the sharks. Those who open the door and venture out do so at their own risk.
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Michael Connelly |
b0837a6
|
Working homicide for so many years, Bosch could not be surprised anymore by the horrors people inflicted on each other. But the horrors people saved for themselves were a different story.
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Michael Connelly |
b28748b
|
You build a city in the desert, water it with false hopes and false idols, and eventually this is what happens. The desert reclaims it, turns it arid, leaves it barren. Human tumbleweeds drift across its streets, predators hide in the rocks.
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Michael Connelly |
d505487
|
Swag?" "Scientific wild ass guess."
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Michael Connelly |
24aebf9
|
The law was not about truth. It was about negotiation, amelioration, manipulation.
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Michael Connelly |
e7b0d14
|
The Strip was still lit by a million neon lights, though the crowds on the sidewalk had greatly decreased by this hour. Still, Bosch was awed by the spectacle of light. In every imaginable color and configuration, it was a megawatt funnel of enticement to greed that burned twenty-four hours a day. Bosch felt the same attraction that all the other grinders felt tug at them. Las Vegas was like one of the hookers on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywo..
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sex
greed
las-vegas
nevada
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Michael Connelly |
aea2372
|
But too much going with the flow is heading us into the sewer...
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Michael Connelly |
18e701c
|
You see, the past is what you make of it. You can use it to hurt yourself or others or you can use it to make yourself strong.
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Michael Connelly |
d62e2df
|
why don't you just Uber your ass out of here.
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Michael Connelly |
410e581
|
Writing does for me what you got in that glass does for you. If I can write about it, I can understand it. And I can put it in the ground. That's all I want to do.
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Michael Connelly |
40907b8
|
When you find the one that you think fits, then grab on for dear life.
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Michael Connelly |
156262b
|
Reasonable Doubt for a Reasonable Fee. Call the Lincoln Lawyer. Bosch
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Michael Connelly |
e0948b1
|
Everybody has a jury, the voices they carry inside.
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Michael Connelly |
718ddb5
|
I have waited twenty years for this phone call . . . and all this time I thought it would go away. I knew I would always be sad for my sister. But I thought the other would go away." "What is the other, Henrik?" Though he knew the answer. "Anger . . . I am still angry, Detective Bosch." Bosch nodded. He looked down at his desk, at the photos of all the victims under the glass top. Cases and faces. His eyes moved from the photo of Anneke ..
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death
life
mission
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Michael Connelly |
0af3153
|
All his life Harry Bosch believed he had a mission. And to carry out that mission he needed to be bulletproof. He needed to build himself and his life so that he was invulnerable, so that nothing and no one could ever get to him. All of that changed on the day he was introduced to the daughter he didn't know he had. In that moment he knew he was both saved and lost. He would be forever connected to the world in the way only a father knew. ..
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joy
fear
love
vulnerability
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Michael Connelly |
79b42fa
|
He knew evil could never be vanquished. It just moved from one place to another and waited.
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Michael Connelly |
f7b5b1b
|
Trust no one. You may be working with the last honest cop in Mexicali, but why bet your life on it?
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mystery
|
Michael Connelly |
cc1f55d
|
You don't like what you see out your window, you put up a wall.
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mystery
|
Michael Connelly |
be7fc9e
|
There was something pitiful about a woman in jail. I had found that almost all of the time, their crimes could be traced back to men. Men who took advantage of them, abused them, deserted them, hurt them. This is not to say they were not responsible for their actions or that some of them did not deserve the punishments they received. There were predators among the female ranks that easily rivaled those among the males. But, even still, the ..
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Michael Connelly |
fca9a25
|
He knew there were two kinds of truth in this world. The truth that was the unalterable bedrock of one's life and mission. And the other, malleable truth of politicians, charlatans, corrupt lawyers, and their clients, bent and molded to serve whatever purpose was at hand.
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Michael Connelly |
374a42c
|
The black heart does not beat alone.
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Michael Connelly |
3ad247c
|
If we can't be honest with ourselves, how can we ever tell the truth to the people out there?
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Michael Connelly |
c78f41b
|
Whatever made her happy made me happy--except the time she thought divorcing me would make her life happier. That didn't do much for me.
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Michael Connelly |
497e001
|
Livingstone had said sympathy was no substitute for action. That was an essential brick in Bosch's wall. He had built himself as a man of action and, at the moment when the integrity of his life's work had been called into question by a man on death row, he had chosen to turn his sympathy for Elizabeth Clayton into action.
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Michael Connelly |
b66c182
|
you can't explain crazy.
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Michael Connelly |
c38835d
|
All his life Bosch had lived and worked in society's institutions. But he hope he had escaped institutional thinking, that he made his own decisions.
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mystery
|
Michael Connelly |
7598ed4
|
Fulgoni gave me a look that I interpreted as a warning that I was crossing into a territory that he had deemed off-limits when we had last discussed his testimony. I gave him a look back that said too fucking bad. I have you under oath. I own you.
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i-own-you
testimony
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Michael Connelly |
dff9dda
|
They need you until they don't need you.
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Michael Connelly |
bba89d2
|
I reached between the seats to the backseat, where her purse was on the floor. It was the size of a grocery bag and it weighed a ton. "What the hell do you have in this thing?" "Everything." I didn't ask for further explanation. I managed to pull the bag up to the front seat, open it, and find her iPad. I put the bag on the floor between my feet, lest I pull a muscle leveraging it into the back again."
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pull-a-muscle
purse
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Michael Connelly |
5d399f0
|
Hidden Highlands was maybe a little richer but not that different from many of the other small, wealthy and scared enclaves nestled in the hills and valleys around Los Angeles. Walls and gates, guardhouses and private security forces were the secret ingredients of the so-called melting pot of southern California.
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wealth
melting-pots
southern-california
los-angeles
society
|
Michael Connelly |
68080c7
|
Out of the blue and into the black is what they called going into a tunnel. Each one was a black echo. Nothing but death in there. But, still, they went.
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Michael Connelly |
e516a30
|
Shouldn't death be the relief from the tortures of life?
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Michael Connelly |