Angela Marsons fine book, Silent Scream, features Kim Stone, a 34 year old police detective with an obsessive drive to solve murder.
As I reflected I thought of Michael Connelly’s sleuth, Harry Bosch.
Both had childhoods with mothers who should not have been parents.
Bosch’s mother was a prostitute. She was murdered when Bosch was 11.
Stone was initially placed in foster care and subsequently put in a care home at 6 years of age. She continued to spend time in foster homes and care homes into her teenage years.
With his mother gone Bosch was taken into the California children’s care and was also in an institution.
The odds are against children from such homes but Stone and Bosch succeeded.
As adults each became police detectives who cared deeply about the victims of murder.
Bosch’s motto is:
Everybody matters or nobody matters.
In Silent Scream, Stone cannot abide that 3 teenage girls, one of whom is pregnant, are found buried near the care home they had supposedly ran away from a decade ago and are only identified as numbers. She says to a team member:
“I can’t keep referring to these victims by number; victim one, victim two. They had enough of that when they were alive. We have three bodies and three names and I need to match them up.”
In Stone’s first care home she was Bed 19.
Neither Stone nor Busch respect authority, especially within police departments.
They constantly clash with superiors.
Orders are guidelines for Stone and Bosch. They will follow an order as long as it does not interfere with their investigations.
Their insubordination is always related to moving their investigations ahead.
They work the longest hours of any detectives in their respective units.
Each abandons sleep in the midst of an investigation.
Because of their demanding abrupt personalities, not many other officers want to work with them.
Other officers also know that working with Stone and Bosch they will be as consumed by the investigations.
For those who can meet the standards of Stone and Bosch there is a mutual respect, even affection.
Bosch is famed for studying murder books for what is missing from the paperwork and then investigating what should have been done.
Stone equally searches out the details of evidence. An urgent call from a crime scene occurring at the same time as an urgent call by her supervisor to return to the station sees her heading to the crime scene.
Neither shies from confronting the wealthy and powerful.
Stone aggravates Nina, the wife of Richard Croft. He is the local MP and she defends terrorists in court. Upset with Stone, she has prominent authorities badger Stone’s supervisor to have her removed from the cases. The superior refuses.
I have lost track of the number of clashes Bosch has had with administrators and city councilors in the city of Los Angeles.
Their focus on work, ill-developed personal communications and minimal interests outside solving murders mean neither has a spouse. Who could maintain a relationship with Stone and Bosch? Their intensity is exhausting. Their bluntness of speech drives away thoughts of a personal relationship.
To my frustration each is quite willing to break the law to move ahead with investigations and act as lone wolf investigators.
Yet, were they to exist in real life Stone and Bosch are exactly the detectives you want investigating the murder of a loved one. They will not rest until they have found the killer.
Stone and Bosch would be an amazing detecting duo if they did not kill each other.
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What an interesting post, Bill. Having read both Kim Stone books and Harry Bosch books, I can certainly see the similarities you point out here. They are both tough survivors who've had to deal with terrible trauma. At the same time, it hasn't made either of them lose their sense of what is right, and even a sense of compassion. To me, that speaks well of both.
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