Plot
Harry is still back in homicide (no closer duty for him) and during a slow night he is asked to investigate a shooting in a "rougher" section of LA. Harry and his partner (Ferras) grudgingly take the assignment and learn that a convenience store owner was murdered in his store. The case draws Harry's interest because he remembers the store and that the owner was once kind to him several years earlier. He assures the owner's son that he will catch the culprit.
As Harry starts to realize that this might not have been a routine robbery but a possible execution by a Triad hitman. Harry starts to zero in on a suspect and then receives a threatening call to tell him to back off. Harry shrugs it off and continues but then his investigation stalls when he receives a video showing that his daughter (Maddy) being kidnapped in Hong Kong. He rushes off to save her realizing that if he is not back by the end of the weekend a possible suspect in the shooting will be set free.
It is a tense plane ride to Hong Kong and Harry feels powerless because there is nothing he can do in the air. When he gets to Hong Kong he is aided by his ex-wife (Eleanor Wish) and her boyfriend. Harry has limited clues but through very good forensic science he was able to possibly know where to look for Maddy. It becomes a race to find Maddy because any delay could mean that she might already be dead.
Bosch and Chu arrest Lam, whom they believe to be the killer, while leaving Ferras to follow Robert Li. Lam reveals that the entire murder was a plot concocted by Mia to relieve her of the burden of her parents; Robert had come up with the idea of disguising it as a triad killing. When Bosch and Chu inform Ferras, he decides to single-handedly arrest Robert Li as an act of defiance against Bosch—but he is killed by Mia during the arrest. Mia then commits suicide. After Ferras' funeral, Maddie confesses to Harry that the "kidnapping" was originally a fake that she planned, to get her mother to agree to let her live with Harry. However, when presented with the opportunity, Quick turned it into a real kidnapping, making the deal with the triad from which Harry saved her. Maddie blames herself for the deaths, especially her mother, that followed. Harry consoles her, promising to show her how they can make up for their mistakes.
Read more about this topic: 9 Dragons (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)