by Harlan Coben
Michael Connelly exposes the opioid crisis in America as Harry Bosch seeks to take down one little piece of it.
Two Kinds of Truth, installment #20 in the Harry Bosch series, does not disappoint. Bosch is back fighting his own demons while battling those on the street. The book takes its title from the Bosch philosophy:
He knew there were two kinds of truth in this world. The truth that was the unalterable bedrock of one's life and mission. And the other, malleable truth of politicians, charlatans, corrupt lawyers, and their clients, bent and molded to serve whatever purpose was at hand." (128)
The Bosch bedrock is sympathy and action, a concept he learned from Missionary David Livingston.
Livingston had said sympathy was no substitute for action. That was an essential brick in Bosch's wall. He had built himself as a man of action and, at the moment when the integrity of his life's work had been called into question by a man on death row, he had chosen to turn his sympathy into action. (page 390)
Sympathy drives him. Bosch comes to the side of Elizabeth Clayton, an addict whose wayward daughter became an opioid casualty. But so does action. In Two Kinds of Truth that action is directed against the opioid system.
It's a trap. They get in and they can't get out....55,000 dead and counting since this all started. Almost as many as we lost in the Vietnam War. That is sadly quantifiable. But the money, forget it. It's off the charts. So many people are making money off this crisis. It's the growth industry of this country. Remember what they used to say about the banks and Wall Street being too big to fail? It's like that. But too big to shut down(pages 103-4).
The industry may be too big to fail, but they are not too big to fight. Go get em Harry!