The Concrete Blonde was published by Little, Brown and Company in 1994, the third Harry Bosch novel and arguably the first to fully achieve the moral complexity that would define the series. The novel puts Bosch’s vigilante tendencies on trial — literally: he is being sued by the family of Norman Church, a man Bosch shot four years earlier while believing him to be the serial killer called the Dollmaker.
The civil trial forces Bosch to justify his actions: he shot Church in his apartment, claiming Church was reaching for a weapon (no weapon was found). Was it a righteous shoot — Bosch’s instinct correctly identifying a killer — or was it an execution by a cop who had crossed the line from detective to executioner? The jury must decide, and Connelly makes the case genuinely ambiguous: Bosch may have been right about Church (Church’s apartment contained trophies from the victims), but he may also have shot an unarmed man.
Then a new body appears — encased in concrete, following the Dollmaker’s signature — and the timeline proves it was killed after Church’s death. Either Bosch killed an innocent man (the real Dollmaker is still active) or there is a copycat who learned the method from press coverage. Bosch must solve the new case while defending himself in court, and the two investigations create a structure where his methods are simultaneously vindicated and questioned.
Collecting The Concrete Blonde
First edition (Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1994): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $30–$80
- Signed first edition: $60–$150
- Without jacket: $8–$15