"The low down on African affairs"

“The Night Fire,” by Michael Connelly brings Harry Bosch into partnership with Detective Renee Ballard. There is also a link with his lawyer half-brother Mickey Haller. Bosch is given a murder book by the widow of his mentor John Jack Thompson. The investigation into a young ex-con in an apparent drug-related killing has not been pursued by Thompson. He seems to have hidden the details of the detectives work to prevent others from finding anything. Ballard and the retired Bosch take this up in their under-the-radar collaboration. En route, Bosch discovers that a judge’s murder has been incorrectly pinned on

“A Death In The Family,” by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Ten minutes into this book I was seized with the excitement that I felt when I first read J.D. Sallinger, Richard Brautigan, Ernest Hemingway or John Steinbek. Those were all more than 50 years ago. So how lucky I felt to have made a literary discovery to brighten my autumn years. Knausgaard’s powerful detail stretches beyond the wrenching honesty of his harrowing examination of death. His meticulousness and passionate detail keeps one enthralled and not a little exhausted. It took me weeks to finish this story examining childhood and teenage years