Harry Bosch links the bullet from a recent crime to the unsolved killing of a young female photographer during the 1992 L.A. riots. His ballistics match now indicates that her death was not random violence, but something more personal. Like an investigator combing through the wreckage after a plane crash, Bosch searches for the "black box," the one piece of evidence that will pull the case together.

Nearing the end of his career, Harry Bosch wants cases more than ever. In one morning, he gets two. DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches a 29-year-old convicted rapist. Meanwhile, Councilman Irvin Irving's son jumped or was pushed from a window, and Irving, Bosch's longtime nemesis, has demanded that Bosch handle the investigation. Relentlessly pursuing both cases, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries.

Longtime defense attorney Mickey Haller is recruited to change stripes and prosecute the high-profile retrial of a brutal child murder. 

Mickey Haller has fallen on tough times. He expands his business into foreclosure defense, only to see one of his clients accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to take away her home.