The Concrete Blonde

The novel opens with a prologue set four years before the main events. LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, a member of a task force hunting a serial killer dubbed the Dollmaker, a strangler who kept his victims' cosmetics as trophies, receives a tip from a street prostitute claiming she escaped from the killer's apartment in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Bosch goes alone without backup, kicks open the door, and confronts a naked, completely hairless man who reaches under a pillow despite repeated orders to stop. Bosch fires a single fatal shot. He lifts the pillow, stares at what lies beneath, and curses in dismay. In the bathroom, however, he discovers a cabinet full of women's cosmetics, evidence consistent with the Dollmaker's known practice.

Four years later, Bosch sits at the defense table in US District Court. Deborah Church, the dead man's widow, is suing him for civil rights violations, represented by formidable civil rights attorney Honey Chandler. Bosch is defended by Rod Belk, an assistant city attorney he considers overmatched. On the trial's first day, Bosch learns that a note has arrived at Hollywood station, written in the Dollmaker's distinctive style, claiming Bosch killed the wrong man and directing police to a body buried beneath the concrete floor of a building destroyed during the previous year's riots. Bosch's former partner, Jerry Edgar, has already excavated the site and found a woman's remains entombed in concrete. The victim is small, with bleached-blonde hair, breast implants, and a leather strap knotted around her neck, matching the Dollmaker's strangulation method. Bosch also finds the killer's signature: a tiny white cross painted on a toenail, a detail never released to the public. Someone alive knows every detail of the Dollmaker's killings.

In court, Chandler delivers a powerful opening statement portraying Bosch as a rogue officer who appointed himself judge and executioner. The trial proceeds with testimony from the task force commander, the coroner's analyst, and Church's widow. A damaging blow comes from a coworker of Church who produces a videotape appearing to prove Church was at a party on the night the 11th victim was killed.

Meanwhile, Edgar arranges for a forensic anthropologist to create a reconstruction of the concrete victim's face, which is broadcast on television. Multiple callers identify her as a pornography actress. Bosch contacts Ray Mora, an Administrative Vice detective who served on the original task force and monitors the pornography industry. Mora identifies her as Rebecca Kaminski, originally from Chicago, who disappeared over 20 months earlier after an outcall date at a hotel. Since Kaminski was alive years after Church's death, Church could not have killed her, confirming another killer is responsible.

Reviewing the case files, Bosch discovers a hidden pattern. While Church's victims came from varied backgrounds, three specific victims plus the lone survivor share distinctive traits: all were blonde, worked in pornography, and took outcall prostitution assignments. The two original victims fitting this profile are the same two for whom no matching makeup was found in Church's apartment and whose killing dates disrupt the otherwise regular interval between Church's murders. Bosch visits Dr. John Locke, a USC psychologist who advised the task force. Locke confirms the two-killer theory and theorizes the second killer, whom investigators call the Follower, had access to the Dollmaker's methods before those details became public, narrowing suspects to people connected to the original investigation.

On the witness stand, Chandler attacks Bosch from multiple angles. She reveals that his mother, Marjorie Lowe, was a Hollywood prostitute strangled and murdered when Bosch was 11, her case never solved, establishing a psychological motive for killing a suspected serial murderer of women. Under pressure, Bosch admits in open court that a second killer is still active, information the department hoped to suppress. He also blurts that Church "was a killer and he deserved what he got," a statement Chandler uses to portray him as having assumed the roles of judge and jury.

Assistant Chief Irvin Irving convenes a new task force at Parker Center, the LAPD's headquarters. Bosch names Mora as his primary suspect: The vice detective served on the original task force, his specialty is the pornography industry, and shift schedules show he was absent on nights the Follower's victims were attacked. Surveillance teams begin monitoring Mora around the clock. Bosch also discovers that Edgar has been secretly meeting Chandler, who used the threat of reporting Edgar to Internal Affairs to compel him to share updates on the investigation. Bosch confronts Edgar but ultimately lets him stay.

The surveillance unravels when Mora detects the tail and doubles back to his house, catching Bosch during an unauthorized search. Bosch finds evidence that Mora has been producing illegal material but nothing connecting him to the killings. After a tense standoff, a deal is struck: Mora surrenders his badge in exchange for no charges. Before leaving, Mora names Dr. Locke as the man he believes is the true Follower, identifying Locke as a suspicious figure reported visiting pornography sets years earlier.

Surveillance shifts to Locke, but he is absent for the weekend. On Monday morning, Chandler fails to appear in court. Edgar is dispatched to her Brentwood home and discovers her murdered, her body bearing the Follower's method along with bite marks and cigarette burns suggesting prolonged torture. Locke is briefly suspected, but his alibi clears him. The jury returns a mixed verdict: They find for the plaintiff but award only one dollar in compensatory and one dollar in punitive damages, essentially validating Bosch's account while acknowledging procedural violations.

Bosch assembles evidence pointing to Joel Bremmer, the Los Angeles Times reporter who covered the Dollmaker case and authored a bestselling book about it. Bremmer is left-handed, smokes the brand of cigarettes found in the concrete, had access to every detail of the Dollmaker's methods, and his Follower note referenced his own newspaper article with a postmark dated before publication, meaning only the author could have had advance knowledge of its content. Chandler's torture also becomes explicable: The killer had mailed her a copy of his note and needed to retrieve the envelope, whose postmark could expose him. Chandler refused to reveal where she hid it.

Bosch follows Bremmer home, plants a hidden tape recorder, and enters carrying a gun loaded with an empty magazine. Through careful manipulation, Bosch draws out incriminating admissions. Bremmer takes Bosch's gun and, believing himself in control, explicitly declares he committed the killings. When he pulls the trigger, the gun only clicks. Bosch knocks him down, loads the live ammunition, and arrests him.

Forensic evidence confirms the case: Bremmer's dental mold matches bite marks on Chandler's body, his pubic hair matches samples from two earlier victims, and a storage locker rented under a false name yields videotapes documenting seven killings. Facing overwhelming evidence, Bremmer accepts a plea deal of life in prison without parole in exchange for leading police to his buried victims.

Through the investigation, Bosch's relationship with Sylvia Moore, a schoolteacher he is dating, is strained by the violence surrounding his work and the death of one of Sylvia's students, Beatrice Fontenot, a 16-year-old honor student killed in a drive-by shooting. Sylvia tells Bosch she needs time apart to decide whether she can sustain a life alongside his work. After a painful week of separation, she comes to his house and tells him she wants to try. Bosch acknowledges he did not know she would return. He only hoped.