Series / Bosch

"I'm Detective Bosch. LAPD, Hollywood Division. This is the work I do."

Harry Bosch: I don't believe there's a better world than this one. I think this is the only one we got.

Bosch is a Prime Video original series that was developed as part of the site's second batch of original programming. It is based on the novels of author Michael Connelly, and stars Titus Welliver as Connelly's most frequent protagonist, LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, a grizzled war^note Harry served in the First Gulf War and in Afghanistan and police veteran. Other stars include Jamie Hector as Bosch's partner Jerry Edgar, Amy Aquino as his boss Lt. Grace Billets, Sarah Clarke as his ex-wife Eleanor Wish, Madison Lintz as his daughter Madeline, and Lance Reddick as Chief of Police Irvin Irving.

The pilot was released in 2014 while the series itself was released all at once in 2015. Like all Amazon originals, the decision to make a full series was based on a fan vote after the pilot was made available online.

In February 2020, Amazon announced the series would be ending after a seventh season in 2021, although the character of Bosch will continue in a spinoff show. The first season of the spinoff, Bosch: Legacy, began airing on May 6, 2022 on Freevee, formerly known as IMDB TV. A second spinoff was greenlit in 2024 that will star Maggie Q as Detective Renée Ballard, who Connelly introduced in the 2017 novel The Late Show.

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Season recaps:

Season 1 was released on February 13, 2015. It combined plot elements from Connelly novels City of Bones, The Concrete Blonde, and Echo Park. It opens with Bosch facing a wrongful death civil suit for a shooting in which he gunned down a Serial Killer known as The Dollmaker. While facing this administrative hearing that could damage his reputation, Bosch still finds the time to investigate a cold case involving the death of a small boy whose bones were found in the woods, as well as pursue Reynard Waits, a serial killer of gay prostitutes who has ties to Bosch's personal past. Annie Wersching plays beat cop Julia Brasher. Veronica Cartwright appears as the killer's foster mother.

Season 2 was released on March 11, 2016, and adapts plot threads from Connelly novels Trunk Music, The Last Coyote, and The Drop. In the second season, Harry is investigating the murder of Tony Allen, a pornographer who has ties to the Russian Mafia in Las Vegas. While this goes on, Deputy Chief Irving's son George is investigating a ring of dirty cops who turn out to have ties to Bosch's investigation. Jeri Ryan appears as one of the suspects, Tony's bitter ex-wife Veronica. Matthew Lillard plays Luke "Lucky" Rykov, a Vegas wise guy who also comes into Harry's view as a suspect.

Season 3 was released on April 21, 2017 and adapts plot threads from the novels A Darkness More Than Night and The Black Echo. Harry is the investigator and an important witness in the murder trial of Andrew Holland, a film director who allegedly strangled his girlfriend to death. The Holland prosecution is threatened when suspicion falls on Harry in the murder of one Edward Gunn, a wino whom Harry suspected years ago of being a Serial Killer. And while that's all going down, Harry is involved in the investigation of Billy Meadows, an Army Special Forces vet (like Harry) who's found shot to death in his RV. There's also a plot thread original to the series involving a serial killer stalking the Koreatown neighborhood. Arnold Vosloo plays an ex-cop now working for Holland on framing Harry Bosch.

Season 4 was released on April 13, 2018 and adapts major plot threads from Connelly novels Angels Flight and 9 Dragons and tie up some unresolved story arcs from the previous seasons (namely, the Koreatown Killer arc and Marjorie Lowe's murder). Harry is called in to investigate the murder of Howard Elias, a crusading attorney who at the time of his death was suing the LAPD for torturing a criminal suspect during an investigation. Meanwhile, his ex-wife Eleanor is worried about her current husband, Reggie, who has disappeared mysteriously in Hong Kong. And the Koreatown Killer is still on the loose.

Season 5 was released on April 19, 2019, and is based on the novel Two Kinds of Truth. Preston Borders, a man Bosch put away for the murder of aspiring actress Danielle Skyler back in the 1990s, is appealing his conviction. He has the support of the DA's office, because of a crucial piece of evidence: DNA found at the scene, tested 20 years later, matches to another man, a deceased serial rapist. Bosch hires former antagonist Honey Chandler to defend him against charges of misconduct. Meanwhile, a second plot line begins with a brutal murder in a pharmacy. This leads Bosch into an investigation of "pill mills" and organized crime trafficking of prescription opioids. Eventually, Bosch goes undercover to get the leaders of the ring. A third plot line original to the series has Jerry Edgar investigating the murder of one of his CIs.

Season 6 was released on April 16, 2020 and adapts plot threads from The Overlook and Dark Sacred Night. A medical physicist named Stanley Kent is murdered, but not before someone kidnapped his wife and forced him to withdraw a large quantity of highly radioactive cesium (used for medical research) from the hospital where he works. The LAPD and the FBI, joined in uneasy partnership, go hunting for the killers and the missing cesium. The second plot line has Bosch investigating a cold case, the 2009 murder of Daisy Clayton, daughter of Elizabeth Clayton, a drug addict that Bosch befriended during the pill mill investigation in Season 5. The third plot continues over from Season 5, as Jerry Edgar's investigation of the murder of his CI leads into a wider criminal conspiracy.

Season 7 was released on June 25, 2021. When an arson fire claims the lives of five people, including a pregnant mother and a ten year old girl, Bosch must risk everything to bring the culprits to justice despite opposition from the building's shady management, a local gang, a "female Stringer Bell," and other powerful forces. Meanwhile, Jerry deals with fallout from the events of season 6, and Maddie assists Honey Chandler on a high-profile case that carries its own risks. Although the idea of a fatal fire was loosely inspired by The Burning Room, this last season featured almost entirely original plot lines.

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This series provides examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: In Episode 1-4 Bosch chases Reynard Waits through some enormous storm drains.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Howard Elias' murder takes place on Angels Flight like in the book, but season 4 is established to take place in March 2017, when in the real world, Angels Flight was out of service from 2013 to August 2017.
• Accidental Hero: Crate and Barrel solve the Koreatown Killer case through absolutely no reason other than being in the right place at the right time and following the clues. And they were complaining about being where they were the whole time.
• Actor Allusion: In the first episode of season 7, when Detective Collins is describing La Mayorista to Bosch and Edgar, he says she's a "female Stringer Bell", and Edgar gets the reference because he's binged The Wire. Jamie Hector, who plays Edgar, was Marlo Stanfield in The Wire.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • While they occasionally find each other on the same side, for most of the novels Irvin Irving is Harry Bosch's enemy, an ally of Internal Affairs and political schemer who is usually trying to get Cowboy Cop Bosch fired. In Bosch, and especially in Season 2, he becomes something of a Reasonable Authority Figure, especially when he and Bosch are working the Carl Nash investigation together.
  • In The Black Echo, Eleanor Wish is totally guilty of the offenses that got her fired from the FBI (and sent to prison). In Bosch Eleanor was fired from the FBI because she was a Fall Guy for misdeeds she wasn't really responsible for.
  • Jerry Edgar gets a significant upgrade in terms of both how good a cop he is and how good a partner he is in the series. In the books, he's a clotheshorse who is much more preoccupied with his real estate business, to the point of interfering with his police work as he is hesitant to answer call outs and work overtime. Bosch is often frustrated by his lack of commitment, and it's theorized that Jerry only remains on the job to ensure a steady flow of real estate clients (as cops are more comfortable buying houses from another cop).
  • Howard Elias is much more a Crusading Lawyer in season 4 than he comes across as in the book, where he's very much more an Asshole Victim. The book explains that he files civil lawsuits against the LAPD regardless of the merits of the case because if he can get the jury to find for his client, even if it's just a judgement of $1, he can bill the city for his work. None of that really figures into his characterization in the series, although it is implied through his history of dealings with Walker. It's also mentioned that he used to be a prosecutor before he went into private practice.
• Adaptation Distillation:
  • Season 1 combines elements of three Michael Connelly novels: the long-dead boy found in the woods (novel City of Bones), the civil suit charging Bosch with the wrongful death of a murder suspect (The Concrete Blonde), and the pursuit of serial killer Raynard Waits (Echo Park).
  • The characterization of Maddie Bosch is also based on later novels in the series. Especially her desire to become a police officer.
  • Season 2 goes mostly with Trunk Music (murder of a producer with a connection to Vegas mobsters and strippers), with elements from The Drop (younger man impersonating his father) and The Last Coyote (death of Harry's mother). It also comes up with a plot thread original to the series in which George Irving is on undercover ops trying to ferret out a drug-running operation with the LAPD, and a completely new ending to the Trunk Music plot that includes a different bad guy.
  • Season 3 combines A Darkness More Than Night (film director arranges plot to frame Harry Bosch for murder, so said film director can beat his own murder rap) and The Black Echo (Army vets smuggling from overseas kill Billy Meadows, one of their own).
  • Season 4 combines major elements of Angels Flight (crusading civil-rights attorney murdered right before a big case against the LAPD is about to begin) and 9 Dragons (Triads and Tongs dealings that result in Eleanor Wish being killed).
  • Season 6 combines The Overlook (plot to stop a terrorist threat) and Dark Sacred Night (the murder of Daisy Clayton).
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The adaptation of The Overlook in Season 6 is vastly expanded on. The original book took place over twelve hours and was a race against the clock. In the show, the hunt for the cesium takes longer and the initial investigation takes about a week. Instead of Clifford Maxwell killing Alicia Kent then himself, what happens is that Bosch zeroes in on Alicia after he thinks it suspicious that the sovereigns would go through so much trouble to steal cesium only to throw it away. She is subsequently arrested after being summoned to the station on the pretense of needing her to collect some of Stan's personal possessions, then she gives Maxwell up in a proffer. Maxwell subsequently commits Suicide by Cop when the police move in to arrest him. Then the story goes on and has a new portion where the sovereigns that Maxwell tried to frame for Stanley Kent's death retaliate by setting off a bomb in the courtroom where Alicia is being arraigned and sending a second one to the FBI office.
  • The adaptation of Two Kinds of Truth in Season 5 sees a variety of additional subplots added as more angles of the investigation are added. Bosch and Edgar are going after the pill mill, Pierce and Vega are tasked with tracking down Jose Esquivela Jr., and Robertson tracks down leads on where the pill mill operators are basing their operations.
• Adaptational Job Change:
  • Irvin Irving never made it above Deputy Chief in the books. In the show, he's Deputy Chief for the first two seasons, then is appointed by Mayor Ramos as interim Chief of Police at the end of season 2 following Chief Tenzer's retirement to fill out the remainder of Tenzer's term, with his appointment becoming permanent after Ramos wins reelection shortly before the start of season 3.
  • In Two Kinds of Truth, Bosch worked for the San Fernando Police Department, and Jerry Edgar worked for the Medical Board of California. In season 5, both are still working with the LAPD.
• Adaptational Nationality: In season 5, the Ukrainian Mafiya outfit that runs the pill mill in Two Kinds of Truth become a gang of white Americans, probably because the last organized crime story (season 2's adaptation of Trunk Music) already involved an Eastern European crime syndicate. That said, the Ukrainians' involvement in the pill mill trade is briefly alluded to when Bosch and Edgar meet with DEA agent Charlie Hovan for some insight on how these crews operate.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Harry Bosch of all people. The books generally play up (sometimes literally) Bosch's lone wolf persona. As such, he's often at odds with or aloof from those around him, whether that be his partners or his love interests. The show handles this a bit differently. First, the people around Bosch are kept relatively fixed from season to season (Edgar, Billets, Maddie, Irving, Crate, Barrel, Mankiewicz and Pierce have been there for every season). His colleagues or higher-ups feel less interchangeable and we end up seeing more of his (albeit limited) people skills and intense loyalty at work. Second, without the ability to see into Bosch's mind, the show uses these relationships with his colleagues, his daughter, and his superior officers to give insight into Bosch's interior life.
  • In the novels, Jerry Edgar can be somewhat sarcastic and judgmental when interviewing witnesses and suspects. In the show, he has a much lighter touch than the more caustic Bosch.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • In season 2's adaptation of Trunk Music, Tony and Veronica Aliso become Tony and Veronica Allen for the show. And Luke Goshen becomes Luke Rykov. (This is part of the show taking the Mafia plot from Trunk Music and turning into a plot with the Russian Mafiya.) Though it turns out his name really IS Luke Goshen, and "Lucky" Luke Rykov is his cover identity.
  • In Season 3's adaptation of A Darkness More Than Night, film director David Storey becomes Andrew Holland, prosecutor Janis Langweiser becomes Anita Benitez. Played with in the case of Holland's murder victim. In the novel, the murder victim is named Jody Krementz and her stage name is Donatella Speers. In the show, Donatella Speers is her real name.
  • In Season 6's adaptation of The Overlook, FBI agent Rachel Walling becomes Sylvia Reece, although the other FBI agents from the book retain their names.
• Adapted Out:
  • In Season 3:
    • In the storyline adapted from A Darkness More Than Night, the unofficial investigator of Gunn's murder is Jerry Edgar, who is piggy-backing on the official investigation being carried out by LAPD Detectives Santiago Robertson and Rondell Pierce. Terry McCaleb and LA Sheriff Detective Jaye Winston don't show up. This is because Amazon doesn't have the rights to the Terry McCaleb character, Terry having previously appeared in The Film of the Book of Blood Work.
    • In the storyline adapted from The Black Echo, Bosch has to rely on Luke Goshen to get him info from the Feds, because Eleanor Wish's character is at a completely different place in her personal timeline.
  • In Season 4: Possibly just to reduce the number of characters, the second victim of the Angels Flight murders switches from Catalina Perez, a Hispanic housekeeper on her way home, to Landon Johnson, the operator of the controls; the operator had to be there, the housekeeper didn't, so she gets Adapted Out while the operator dies instead. Also, there's the entire part of the plot from Angels Flight regarding who really killed Stacey Kincaid. There, it's easily a third of the book; here, it's a single line of dialogue.
  • In Season 5, the role of Harry Bosch’s legal counsel is played by Honey Chandler instead of Mickey Haller, as Amazon doesn’t have the license for Haller’s character. All of the characters from the San Fernando Police Department are also absent, as in this storyline Harry is still in the employ of the LAPD.
• Amazing Freaking Grace: Played on bagpipes at George Irving's funeral.
• Amoral Attorney:
  • J. Reason Fowkkes. In season 3, he's Andrew Holland's high-profile attorney, and is complicit in Holland's schemes to discredit the witnesses and evidence against him. When he returns in season 7, it's established that he's a mob attorney with the contacts to hire contract killers.
  • Howard Elias wins his cases against the LAPD by working with a high ranking police official, receiving damning case details that make the department settle out of court to avoid embarrassment, then using the winnings to pay his contact.
  • In season 5, Preston Borders' attorney Lance Cronyn masterminds a plot to free his client that includes fabricating a confession from another (deceased) inmate, and fabricating DNA evidence to support the false confession.
• And Starring:
  • ...And Jason Gedrick in season 1
  • ...And Lance Reddick from season 2 onwards
• And the Adventure Continues: The series ends with Bosch, having retired from the LAPD, getting his PI license to set up the spinoff series.
• Answer Cut: Near the end of Season 2, Bosch wonders of Layla the loose end, "I wonder where she is with all that money." Cut to Layla, sipping wine on the coast of Spain at a restaurant—where she's tracked down by Joey Marks's lawyer.
• Anticlimax: The Koreatown Killer plotline ends not with any grand police work Harry Bosch-style but instead with the KTK getting struck by a car and killed. Crate and Barrel simply run down his prints and the gun and cell phone found with his body and solve the case.
• Arc Welding: A minor case, and one introduced entirely for the series, but season four reveals that one man is behind events which, in the books, are totally unrelated.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Though he doesn't get main credits billing, Pierce becomes a main cast member starting in season 3, following his promotion to Detective I.
  • Maddie is a recurring character in the first season. In season 2, Madison Lintz gets main credits promotion, though is still largely a side character. She is in every episode of season 3, which is where she starts to play more of an integral role in the stories.
  • Honey Chandler is a recurring character in the first three seasons, then takes on a main cast role from season 4 onwards.
  • Jerry Edgar has a larger presence than in the books since many of the books being adapted are ones where someone other than Edgar was Bosch's partner. Starting in season 5, he even gets several subplots of his own.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: When Bosch, Edgar, and the other cops are storming through the Chinese pool hall in the season 4 finale, one of the hoodlums starts spouting faux-Mandarin gibberish. Detective Moy, who does speak Mandarin, tells him to knock it off.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Captain Harvey Pounds is such an unpleasant jerk to work with that practically every cop who ever worked under him cheered when Harry threw him through a glass window.
  • Howard Elias is seen as this by the LAPD; since he was an attorney who specialized in cases against the department, most of them feel like he got what he deserved (with a few like Bosch who still want to make sure justice is done).
• Back for the Finale: The seventh season sees reappearances by many characters who'd appeared over the seasons, including Julia Brasher and Harvey Pounds (from season 1), Iverson (season 2), Luke Goshen (seasons 2 and 3), and more.
• Bad Santa: The pilot, set around the holiday season, features a Santa Claus vomiting while under arrest at the police station. Another one appears in the same place late in Season 3.
• Battle in the Rain: Bosch's confrontation with Roberto Flores, the one that ended up in the shooting that Bosch is later facing charges for, happened in a driving rain.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: In the season 2 finale, Nash refuses to surrender when Bosch and Edgar corner him. He's killed when one of his grenades go off.
• Big Brother Is Watching You: Season 3 reveals that Bosch has been secretly (and illegally) surveilling Edward Gunn.
• Black Comedy Rape: Barrel likes to regularly tell other colleagues a certain joke about a hunter raped by a bear.
• Bland-Name Product: In season four, the Back Story police-brutality crime involves and is generally referred to by the name of a (fictional) "Black Guardian" pencil, whereas in the book it was a (real) Black Warrior pencil. Notable for originally having been averted, then played straight in the adaptation.
• Bookends:
  • Season 4, episode 4 starts with Harry and Sheehan talking in his living room, overlooking the Valley, and one of the things Sheehan mentions is that regular people don't have any idea what it takes to do their work. The episode ends with Harry standing alone in his living room, overlooking the Valley, listening to voicemails offering condolences for Eleanor's death ... until the last one is an update on a case that, unbeknownst to the cop giving the update, relates to his own mother's murder. The message is harsh but clear: Harry's job isn't something most people could possibly do.
  • The first and final seasons end the same way, where a murder suspect responsible for the death of a child skates due to a technicality, and is gunned down in a Vigilante Execution by the father of the deceased child.
• Bittersweet Ending: Bosch leaves the LAPD after Michael Peña is shot and killed outside Hollywood Station while awaiting transfer to the FBI. He decides to become a private detective instead. Meanwhile, Maddie decides to join the LAPD.
• Brick Joke: We see an experienced former detective sitting on the same bench previously seen being occupied by some Bad Santas (see above). When he stands up, he's shown to have been sitting on a handkerchief, apparently fully aware of the kinds of things that happen to benches like that.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • After being a main character in season 1, Julia Brasher makes one more appearance in Season 2, still on patrol and still somewhat resentful of how her involvement with Harry Bosch worked out.
  • Honey Chandler disappears from season 1 after winning the wrongful death suit against Bosch. She reappears at the end of season 2 as Veronica Allen's criminal attorney, which she is for the first episode of season 3 as well. Then she disappears on another bus trip before coming back to be a more prominent recurring character in season 4 onwards.
  • Luke Goshen reappears in Season 3 and gives Harry some assistance in the William Meadows investigation.
  • Eleanor Wish returns in the last episode of Season 3 after being in Hong Kong for the whole season.
  • After being part of the pill mill investigation in season 5, Robertson is absent in season 6. He returns in season 7, now working out of RHD and partnered with Bennett, and works with Hollywood Homicide to investigate the murder of Vincent Franzen and attempted murder of Honey Chandler.
  • The last season is filled with the bus dropping off long-missing characters, from Julia Brasher once again (helping Billets deal with two sexist cops who are harassing her), to one scene with Dr. Golliher (the Season 1 forensic scientist), FBI agent Sylvia Reece (from Season 6), Harry's defense attorney Rodney Belk (from season 1) as special master in the Franzen murder case, John Iverson (Bosch's Las Vegas PD contact) from Season 2, and one last appearance from Luke Goshen (not seen since season 3) in the series finale.
• Call-Forward: In the first episode of Season 5, Coniff and Espinosa are debriefing the Hollywood homicide investigators about the body of a woman with a cross painted on her toenail. Pierce and Vega catch another body near the end of the season. This was the calling card of The Dollmaker in the novels.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Bosch's cliff house with a spectacular view is explained by him getting a payment from a film called The Black Echo that was adapted from one of his cases. There is in fact a poster for that movie on the wall. In Season 3, however, plot threads from The Black Echo—Army veterans turning to smuggling and murder, and a teenaged graffiti artist sees the first murder—are incorporated into the TV show Bosch. So in the Bosch universe, just what is The Black Echo about?
  • In the first episode of season 7, when Detective Collins is briefing Bosch and Edgar about the gangs involved in the apartment building that burned down, he describes "La Mayorista", Gladys Rodriguez, as a "female Stringer Bell". Jerry Edgar gets the reference immediately because he's binge-watched The Wire. That must've been an interesting experience for Edgar, considering that the guy who plays Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) looks just like him, the guy who plays Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick) looks suspiciously like Chief Irving, and Marlo's lieutenant Monk Metcalf (Kwame Patterson) looks a lot like Jerry's deceased informant Gary Wise. Other The Wire cast who appeared in Bosch include James Ransome (Eddie Arceneaux from season 2) as Ziggy Sobotka, Clark Johnson (Howard Elias from season 4) as Gus Haynes, Michael Kostroff (Hank Myers^note Casino security at the Mirage in season 2) as Maurice Levy, Rick Otto (Bernardo Piccinini^note One of the dirty cops on Carl Nash's crew in season 2) as Kenneth Dozerman, Tom Mardirosian (Joey Marks) as Kristos Koutris, Chris Ashworth (Vardy^note a member of the pill mill operation in season 5) as Sergei Malatov, and Antonio D. Charity (Bo Jonas) as Dwight Tilghman.
• Closest Thing We Got: Late in season 2, Carl Nash is pretty seriously hobbled after getting shot through the thigh. So he goes to an old girlfriend—who is an ex-veterinarian.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In Season 4, Snyder says offhandedly that she lost her ID. It's later found in the parking lot. This throwaway dialogue later proves crucial to solving the mystery.
  • Bradley Walker's driver reports his gun stolen midway through season 4. It turns out to be the gun that Walker used to kill Howard Elias and Landon Johnson.
  • When Bosch goes undercover to infiltrate a pill mill in season 5, he is told to carry a gun because it would fit his fake identity, but to render it unfireable so it can't be used against him. He is also given a cane with a knife concealed in the handle for self-defense. By the end of the season the gun has been unsuccessfully used against him^note Albeit in a game of Russian roulette, so it's possible he would have been fine even with a functional gun, and he has defended himself with the blade.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • When Bosch goes to the VA clinic in Season 5 as he's beginning his infiltration, he speaks with a Dr. Hansen who gives him some good advice about taking ibuprofen and staying off the opioids. So Bosch is surprised when he goes to the shady clinic a couple episodes later and finds out that Dr. Hansen double-dips, and is also the man in charge of the operation there.
  • An establishing shot at the Craver murder scene in episode 3 of season 6 starts on Roger Dillon leaning up against a truck from the crime scene cleanup company. He is later revealed to be the man responsible for Daisy Clayton's murder.
• Coincidental Broadcast: Used multiple times in Season 3. A bulletin about Merch's body being found on the beach is playing over Thanksgiving dinner in one episode. In another Dobbs just happens to hear a radio broadcast about Jerry Edgar getting shot by Moreno.
• Comforting Comforter:
  • In case anyone was wondering how much Harry Bosch loves his daughter, he tucks her in during the opening sequence of episode 3-1.
  • Then she does it for him in episode 4-2.
• Conversational Troping: Early in season 3, Andrew Holland and his toadies are talking about Harry Bosch. One suggest the Bosch story—the Son of a Whore seeking to avenge his mother's murder—would make a good movie for Holland. Holland says "It's too trope-y, who would believe it?"
• Corrupt Politician:
  • Police commission president Bradley Walker in season four (and, arguably, parts of season three). He gets illegally-obtained information from Gabriella Lincoln about police brutality cases and passes it on to Howard Elias, who sues the city, settles big out of court, and kicks back some of his proceeds to Walker, who uses the money to fund his family's construction business. It works great until Elias finds a case that he wants to take to trial, which will expose the source of his information, prompting Walker to personally murder him. In his 20s, Walker was also a playboy who used his best friend's status as a police informant to pick up prostitutes. When he killed Harry's mother, his father pulled strings to keep Walker out of trouble.
  • In season 7, Irving finds out that the mayor was under investigation by the FBI for illegal activity (and was guilty, despite the FBI dropping the investigation). He uses this information to blackmail the mayor into getting him a second term as chief.
• Creator Cameo: A photo of Michael Connelly is used to depict the man who killed Harry Bosch's mother. Connelly actually shows up in Season 5 for a split second.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Reynard Waits's foster mother ends the novel Echo Park alive, but is killed in this series.
  • The security guard at Tony and Veronica's compound is a much more important character in Bosch than he is in Connelly novel Trunk Music. This results in him being dead at the end.
  • The Angels Flight control operator is not killed in the novel, but is here because the second victim in the novel was Adapted Out and presumably they still wanted a secondary victim, both to ensure the killer was still seen as going over a Moral Event Horizon by killing a completely innocent bystander, and also to have a second bullet for ballistics to test.
• Death of a Child: In the pilot, Bosch opens a new case, after finding the bones of a ten-year-old murder victim in the woods.
• Decomposite Character:
  • In the Angels Flight novel, the Special Master ^note the attorney appointed to oversee Bosch's access to the Howard Elias files Carla Emtremkin also turns out to be Elias's mistress. Season 4 breaks her into two different characters: Elias's mistress is now Pamela Duncan, his jury consultant, while Honey Chandler is brought back to act as the special master.
  • The IA mole in Angels Flight, John Chastain, was also Elias's murderer. In season 4, they are two separate characters. Gabriella Lincoln is still the mole, but the killer is now Bradley Walker.
  • Elements of FBI agent Rachel Walling are split into two characters across the show. Her part as a love interest to Bosch and profiler in Echo Park are given to Eleanor Wish, while the character of Sylvia Reece in season 6 is filling Walling's role in The Overlook.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • In the novels Kizmin Rider is a pretty important character, starting out as Harry Bosch's partner and unofficial mentee in Trunk Music, and remaining a regular character through The Drop when she's risen in LAPD command. In this show, she pops up a few times in Season 1 and plays little role in the story other than being Grace Billets' lesbian lover. This is probably because the character of Jerry Edgar was significantly upgraded for the series.
  • Detective John Chastain from Internal Affairs is an important character in the early novels, an antagonist to Bosch up until Angels Flight where he is a key character. In this series he appears only in the pilot, and when the Angels Flight story was adapted into Season 4, his role is filled by Gabriella Lincoln.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • In the City of Bones plot for season 1, Johnny Stokes is still killed in a vigilante execution. In the book, it was done by Officer Julius Edgewood as revenge for the death of Julia Brasher. Since Brasher survives her accidental shooting in the show, Stokes's death is committed by Samuel Delacroix as revenge for his son's death.
  • In The Overlook, Clifford Maxwell kills Alicia Kent then himself when cornered. In season 6, Alicia Kent is arrested and gives up Maxwell as part of a plea deal, and Maxwell is killed by the police when they move in to arrest him.
• Dirty Bomb: This is the fear in season 6, when a bunch of nuclear material is stolen and the theft linked to an anti-government group.
• Dirty Cop:
  • Season 2 sees Irving's son George going undercover into a ring of corrupt cops involved in racketeering. Carl Nash, who runs the ring, is established to have been kicked off the force because of his dirtiness.
  • Gabriella Lincoln, one of the IAD cops that Bosch has to take onto his task force in season four, is on the take, passing information through Bradley Walker to Howard Elias and getting a portion of the kickback in return.
  • It turns out that Ray Marcos and Daniel Arias, the two vice cops Edgar has been talking to in relation to the murder of his CI in Season 5, are actually in the pocket of Jamaican gangster Jacques Avril and set Gary up to be murdered. Marcos and Arias are eventually killed on Avril's orders when they come under Internal Affairs scrutiny.
  • Although not a major character, a sheriff's deputy in season 6 facilitates the bombing of a courthouse due to his antigovernment views.
  • Captain Dennis Cooper turns out to be one. At the end of season 5, it turns out he's responsible for juking stat numbers at Hollywood Division. In season 6, he pursues a petty sexual harassment complaint against Billets on Vega's behalf. Then in season 7, when Billets is dealing with harassment by two sexist cops, he has a jewelry store owner he was fraternity brothers with give a pair of earrings to said sexist cops to plant in Billets's car in an attempt to frame her. Billets calls in a favor with Vega, who gets the jewelry store owner in question to flip. The last we see of Cooper is him and the other two cops being escorted out of Hollywood Division by IA in handcuffs.
• Double Don't Know: In Season 3, Episode 5, "Blood Under the Bridge," Robertson, who is investigating the Gunn murder, is trying to determine what happened, talks to Edgar, who first states that he thinks Bosch is being framed. He then posits that, to put heat on someone else, Bosch is framing himself. When Edgar shuts down that idea with a firm "Never," Robertson merely replies, "You don't know, youngblood, you don't know."
• Double Standard: Bosch is very critical of Honey Chandler for defending criminals, despite the fact that he hired her to defend himself from misconduct charges. Maddie rightly calls him out on it.
• Down L.A. Drain:
  • Bosch and Irving stroll down the LA River and talk about how the city's spruced it up a little bit, but it's still an ugly concrete ditch. In episode 4, Bosch's pursuit of Reynard Waits through the sewers ends up with Bosch in the concrete ditch, having lost Waits.
  • In episode 4-3 Drake meets Sheehan at the LA River and comments about how much he hates it.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • In season 1, Nicholas Trent hangs himself after the investigation of Arthur Delacroix's murder leads to the public exposure of his past child molestation conviction.
  • In season 6, Elizabeth Clayton overdoses on a concoction of alcohol and pills after her daughter's killer gets a significantly reduced sentence for giving up a human trafficking ring.
• Driven to Villainy: In season 6, the investigation into the missing cesium focuses the theory of a dirty bomb attack by the antigovernment 308s, culminating in one of the members, Travis Strout, being killed by the FBI after opening fire on and wounding a patrol officer. It later turns out the 308s were innocent and the agent who killed Travis, Clifford Maxwell, is the actual person responsible for the murder the 308s are being investigated for. Nonetheless, Travis's widow Heather is sufficiently angered by the event to the point that she tries to orchestrate a bombing.
• Drives Like Crazy:
  • The Koreatown Killer is a pretty reckless cyclist. His habits eventually get him killed midway through season 4.
  • Robertson is one, to the point that Bennett doesn't like his driving and he's regularly teased about it.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first two seasons gave starring credits to the season's main antagonists, with Jason Gedrick (Reynard Waits) being in the main credits for season 1, while Brent Sexton (Carl Nash) and Jeri Ryan (Veronica Allen) are in the main credits for season 2.
• Evolving Credits: The fourth season adds several clips of Angels Flight in operation to reflect the fact that the season is an adaptation of Angels Flight.
• Expy:
  • Season 4 introduces Laura Cooke, who functions very much like Keisha Russell does in the books, but for some reason isn't Keisha Russell. This is strange as Russell does show up in season 2. Perhaps the actress wasn't available.
  • Season 5 has Honey Chandler’s investigator, Hector Bonner, a big Badass Biker who is very clearly meant to be Mickey Haller’s investigator Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski. Chandler herself is also taking the role that Mickey Haller played in Two Kinds of Truth.
• Fake Guest Star: A fair number of the cop characters at Hollywood Division get focus and major roles in the stories, but only Titus Welliver, Jamie Hector, Amy Aquino, Madison Lintz, and Lance Reddick get main credits billing.
  • This applies at Hollywood Division to Gregory Scott Cummins and Troy Evans (Crate and Barrel) on a show-length basis.
  • Also true of DaJuan Johnson (Rondell Pierce) and Paul Calderon (Jimmy Robertson). This is most notable in season 4's adaptation of Angels Flight, where they're in every episode as members of the Elias task force. The same is true in season 4 for Winter Ave Zoli (Amy Snyder) and in seasons 6 and 7 for Jacqueline Obradors (Christina Vega). It's finally averted for Robertson in season 7, with him getting main credits billing once he enters the story.
  • Mimi Rogers as Honey Chandler gets this in seasons 4, 5 and 6, where she takes on a larger role than in prior seasons (in season 4, she's the special master tasked with overseeing Elias's files; in season 5, Bosch retains her to help defend himself against Preston Borders' accusations of evidence tampering; in season 6, Maddie is interning at her firm, and she defends Alicia Kent). This is finally averted by season 7, where her name appears in the title credits for every episode she appears in.
• Fake Video Camera View: In Episode 1-4, when the police are taking Waits to a location where he claims he buried his first victim, we see him through the viewfinder of a video camera that O'Shea has a cameraman filming what is happening.
• False Flag Operation: Season six features a joint LAPD/FBI operation investigating an anti-government group of "Sovereign Citizens," who are suspects in a case in which a scientist is forced to steal radioactive material from his workplace in order to ransom his kidnapped wife; he is then murdered. Turns out the whole thing was a setup by the wife, who wanted to end the marriage but had assets she didn't want to split in a divorce. She purposefully gave testimony implicating the anti-government group to cover her tracks.
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: At Barrel's retirement party at the end of Season 5, Crate says that Barrel's illustrious career included investigating the Night Stalker case, the Manson murders, and the Koreatown Killer.
• Fan Disservice: Pasty, unattractive Andrew Holland lounging about his mansion with nothing more than a hand towel over his privates, and Holland then ditching the hand towel to take a swim.
• The Film of the Book: Every season is, but Season 5 is the only one to stick with a single novel (Two Kinds of Truth) rather than amalgamating plot chunks from multiple Connelly novels.
• 555
  • The LAPD hotline is 323-555-0172.
  • In Season 3, episode 8, Bosch walks past the Hollywood homicide location whiteboard, all the detectives are listed with their contact phone numbers with valid Los Angeles area codes (213, 323, etc.), the phone numbers all start with the invalid code of 0 or 1, e.g. Jerry Edgar's number is 213-159-0193, Crate's is 323-086-0167, and Pierce's number is 213-189-0172, except Bosch, who has a real number, 323-244-5631.
  • In Season 6, Episode 3, while Bosch is checking numbers in the Oncology Department of a hospital against numbers Stanley Kent had called on his phone, while the numbers have valid Los Angeles area codes, e.g. 213, 818, etc., again, the 7-digit part of the phone numbers start with 0 or 1.
• Framing the Guilty Party: It turns out in Season 5 that the seahorse pendant that sent Preston Borders to jail was planted there, not by Bosch but by Irving. A beat cop made a bogus arrest of Borders, they found the pendant in his backpack, and Irving planted it in Borders' apartment so it could be "found" in a legitimate search and be admissible.
• "Friends" Rent Control:
  • A movie was made based on one of Bosch's old cases and he used the money from selling the rights to purchase a stilted house at 1870 Blue Heights Drive while continuing to work as a detective.
  • Also averted with Jerry, whose real estate side hustle funded his house (as well as his fancy car and nice clothes).
  • Played straight, though, with Julia Brasher's lavish house in the Venice canals. It's possible she saved up some money from her short-lived legal career and/or aid from her wealthy father, but this is never firmly established.
• Foreshadowing: Throughout season 3, the Koreatown Killer is shown repeatedly making very aggressive, unsafe turns on his bicycle, cutting in front of cars. He's eventually struck by a car and killed.
• Gender Flip:
  • Judge Houghton in A Darkness More Than Night is a man, and is a woman in season 3.
  • Of the cops put on the Howard Elias murder task force for season four, both of the IAD investigators are women, whereas they were men in Angel's Flight. Combined with Race Lift for at least two characters.
• Gilligan Cut: When Bosch and Edgar are headed out to the desert in episode 1-4, Edgar the clothes horse pesters Bosch to stop at some outlet stores so he can get a new suit. Bosch says they're not stopping, Edgar keeps pestering, and Bosch says "We are not stopping." Cut to Bosch pulling into the parking lot of the outlet mall.
• Grief-Induced Split: Irving tells Connie that George is working a safe police desk job, whereas he was really doing dangerous undercover work for Internal Affairs. The truth comes out when George is murdered by the corrupt cops he was investigating, and Connie files for divorce not long after.
• Hero Antagonist: Santiago Robertson in Season 3 is this, following the quite reasonable leads towards Bosch. He is actually somewhat like Bosch himself, being a skilled career detective who follows the leads wherever they take him.
• High-Class Call Girl: In season 3, Annabelle Crowe is revealed to supplement her acting work with work as a deluxe escort. This complicates things for the Andrew Holland prosecution, since she's an important witness. Holland's people inevitably find out about it, and solve the issue by buying her off with a TV production based in Europe.
• Hired to Hunt Yourself:
  • Detective Gabriella Lincoln, one of the two IA cops assigned to the Elias task force, was involved in covering Bradley Walker's tracks and framing Frankie Sheehan.
  • In season 6, after the two corrupt cops in Avril's pocket are killed on his orders, Edgar is introduced by DEA Agent Charlie Hovan to his informant, John Winston. Winston is one of the shooters who participated in the murders.
  • In season 6, FBI agent Clifford Maxwell, who conspires with Stanley Kent's wife to murder him, is on the task force tracking down the cesium he extorted Kent into stealing.
• Historical In-Joke: Bits and pieces of real LAPD history are interspersed into some of the characters' backgrounds.
  • Barrel is mentioned to have investigated Nightstalker and the Manson family's crimes.
  • Crate investigated the Wonderland murders.
  • Robertson was at Rampart Division when that division became known for rampant corruption. Terry Drake is implied to have been one of those on the take at the time, and who kept his job because Rafael Perez never named him.
• How We Got Here: The first scene of Season 5 opens with Bosch, apparently an opioid addict, in a scary looking trailer camp in the middle of nowhere, in the clutches of some violent gangsters. Then we get a "Two Weeks Earlier" title card and the story plays out from there to show that this is an undercover story.
• I'll Tell You When I've Had Enough!: A drunk Edward Gunn says this word for word in the first episode of Season 3, when the bartender tries to cut him off.
• Improbable Age: Just how old is Barrel supposed to be, if he investigated the Manson murders? (Troy Evans turned 71 in 2019, which if matched to Barrel's age would have made him 21 at the time of Tate-La Bianca. For the record, Barrel is said to have been 19 when he served in Vietnam.)
• Incredibly Lame Pun: In Season 1, the City of Bones plot is kicked off when Harry gets a phone call from Sgt. Mankiewicz, the Hollywood Division watch commander, who sends Bosch to check out a bone that was found by a dog. Bosch is immediately skeptical because he's seen this before and it's usually animal bones. Mank assures Bosch that the caller is a doctor and not only identified the bone as human, but specifically a child's upper arm bone, complete with scarring from numerous injuries.
  Mank: The point is, this doctor says it was just a kid, Harry. So could you humor us and go check out this humerus?
  Bosch: .....
  Mank: Oh, come on, that was fucking funny.
  Bosch: Hilarious, Mank.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: While questioning Rudy Tafero for details about how he and his brother killed Edward Gunn, Bosch lets slip that he knows that the Taferos drove a Cadillac to the murder scene, without Rudy mentioning that detail. Listening to the interrogation tape later, Edgar is able to easily figure out Bosch's secret, namely, that he basically let the Tafero brothers kill Gunn.
• The Infiltration:
  • Bosch finds out in Season 2 that his murder suspect Luke Rykov is an undercover FBI agent.
  • Bosch infiltrates a pill mill in season 5.
• Institutional Allegiance Concealment:
  • In season 5, Bosch goes undercover as an opioid addict solve the pharmacy murders. Things go wrong when Bosch is separated from his backup and whisked off to the gang's camp in the desert. Then he gets outed after a few days when Honey Chandler chooses to leak a story to the Los Angeles Times, which is posted on the front page with Bosch's picture front and center.
  • In season 6, DEA agent Charlie Hovan poses as a criminal who approaches Jacques Avril to use his money laundering services. It all goes well until Hovan's informant John Winston, who is secretly one of the cop killers Jerry is looking for, burns Hovan to Avril to save his own skin.
• Internal Affairs:
  • In Season 1, Bosch and IA hate each other, and Chastain from IA is excited at the prospect of Bosch getting fired over the lawsuit.
  • A relatively rare sympathetic portrayal of IA in Season 2. Irvin Irving's son George is working with IA to expose some corrupt cops.
  • IA is back to being a bunch of dicks in Season 3 when they're looking to bust Bosch for a public confrontation with O'Shea in a crowded restaurant.
  • Bosch gets a Teeth-Clenched Teamwork situation with IA in season 4, when two IAD cops are assigned to his task force on the Angels Flight murders.
  • Sort of with the Conviction Integrity Unit in Season 5, a special investigative task force working with the DA. Christina Henry is convinced that Harry framed Preston Borders, but Harry is aware she's biased by how their past relationship ended.
  • They are back to being portrayed heroically at the start of season 6, when Jerry Edgar is helping them with their investigation into Ray Marcos and Daniel Arias, the corrupt cops in Jacque Avril's pocket who set up Jerry's informant Gary Wise to be murdered. When Marcos and Arias are killed by the gangsters, the case is shifted from IA over to RHD.
• It Has Been an Honor: A villainous example in Season 3, when Trevor Dobbs and Xavi Moreno say this to each other upon making their final parting. They later turn on each other, though.
• Jack the Ripoff: In season 6, it turns out Daisy Clayton's murder was staged by her killer to look like the work of the Backseat Butcher, a known serial killer. It's very effective because the perpetrator is a crime-scene cleaner who has cleaned up after said serial killer, and thus knows details about the scene that the police never disclosed to the public.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Season 2 ends with Bosch getting a tip that leads to the man who killed his mother, only to find that the killer died of cancer two years before. Ultimately averted a season later when we find out that Harry was wrong and someone else killed his mother.
  • Season 3 starts by revealing Veronica Allen gets a hung jury in her trial for the murder of the priest. And since everyone who could tie her to the murder of her husband is dead, she gets away clean. (She gets a little tiny bit of karma as Layla made off with all of Tony's money.)
• Left Hanging: The storyline of Layla and the nearly $4 million she escaped to Europe with in Season 2 is never resolved; the last we see is the mob having successfully tracked her down to a seaside resort.
• Libation for the Dead: Sharkey's little hoodlum buddies in Season 3 pour one out for him after finding out he was murdered.
• Mafiya: Anthony Allen, who is Armenian, has been using his pornography business to launder money for the Russian mob.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot:
  • The murder of an attorney in season 4 -> a conspiracy in which police commission president has been selling inside information to said attorney in exchange for cash from the major settlements the attorney is then able to get from the city.
  • The death of Jerry Edgar's confidential informant in season 5 -> a criminal conspiracy led by a Haitian warlord turned drug kingpin with corrupt cops in his pocket.
  • The robbery and murder of a pharmacist in season 5 -> a pill mill scheme.
  • Inverted in season 6. It is suspected that an anti-government group is building a Dirty Bomb after evidence suggests that they forced a scientist to steal radioactive material and then murder him; the ensuing explosion would render much of the Los Angeles area uninhabitable. Both the LAPD and FBI race to track the missing material and stop the bombing plot until it's eventually revealed that the whole thing was orchestrated by the scientist's wife, who wanted to end her marriage but had assets she didn't want to split in a divorce. The whole dirty bomb plot was a red herring she planted to draw suspicion away from herself.
• Missed Him by That Much: "God Sees" has Bosch catching Woody Woodrow in the act of surveilling him, and then going off on a high speed chase. Woody successfully manages to ditch his car and steal another one. The chase ends with Bosch at an intersection, desperately trying to figure out where the car went, while Woody passes by in his stolen car maybe four feet behind Bosch's back.
• Monochrome Past: Combined with Splash of Color. In season 5, the various flashbacks to the original Danielle Skyler investigation are shown in black and white, except for the stab wounds and blood stains and the crucial seahorse pendant, which are in color.
• Mythology Gag
  • Episode 1-2 is titled "Lost Light". This is also the title of a Michael Connelly novel, but not one of the ones being adapted for the series.
  • Near the end of season 1, Harry leaves the police station to a standing ovation from his colleagues. This is the same way The Burning Room, the Bosch novel that came out the same year as season 1, ends.
  • When Bosch is in the woods in the first episode, he encounters a coyote. The fourth novel was titled The Last Coyote, and that symbolism was a key plot point.
  • Between seasons 1 and 2, while on suspension, Harry grows out a mustache and beard. Maddie insists that he shave it off because it invokes the image of a 1970s porn star. In the novels, Harry Bosch wears a mustache.
  • When Bosch and Edgar are pursuing the pill shill lead at the airport in Season 5, it's mentioned that the Russian and Ukrainian Mafiya is heavily involved in opioid trafficking. Bosch observes that the names they have for their lead "don't sound Russian." The season is an adaptation of Two Kinds of Truth, where the pill mill scheme was run by members of the Ukrainian Mafiya, as opposed to here where it's run by white Americans and one British man who have cartel ties.
  • In Two Kinds of Truth Bosch thinks about the police custom of how to zoom through stoplights—rely on your partner to keep an eye out to your right and yell "clear!" if you can make it through the intersection. In the first episode of season 5, which is an adaptation of this book, this goes wrong for Crate and Barrel and they get broadsided by Officer Powers' patrol car.
  • In The Drop, Crate and Barrel are two homicide cops, real names Solomon and Glanville. They are particularly uncooperative when Bosch is asked to follow up their investigation and they irritate Harry a great deal. In the show Bosch, Crate and Barrel are Detectives Moore and Johnson, two completely different characters who are buddies with the other Hollywood Division cops and function as comic relief and even get a few minor subplots of their own.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • Bosch, for all his faults, is a good and honest cop at the end of the day. In season 1, he repeatedly warns Brasher against rushing into action but finds himself having no choice but to make a report that could end her career. Brasher doesn't appreciate Bosch's advice or his honesty and ends up throwing her lot in with Captain Pounds and files a false sexual harassment claim against Bosch in order to keep her job.
  • Said verbatim by Snyder in season 4 when recounting to Bosch how exactly the police were led to think Michael Harris was involved in Stacey Kincaid's kidnapping (he left his fingerprints on one of her books while moving it to vacuum the interior of the Kincaids' car).
• Noodle Incident: One of the reasons George Irving is able to get close to the corrupt cops he's investigating is that he covered for Eddie Arceneaux during some incident while they were both in the academy; while the incident isn't named, it's apparently serious enough to have gotten both of them kicked off the force.
• No-Tell Motel: The motel that Waits takes a prostitute to in Episode 1-5 advertises adult movies.
• Not His Sled: There are several points in which plot points from the books end up being subverted, even though they usually keep to the same general outline.
• Office Romance:
  • In season 1, Bosch gets into a sexual relationship with beat cop Julia Brasher.
  • In season 3, while investigating Andrew Holland for the murder of Donatella Speer, Harry is dating Anita Benitez, the deputy district attorney handling the prosecution of Holland.
  • After his ex-wife finds a new boyfriend, Jerry Edgar begins dating Joan Bennett, one of the RHD detectives who investigated the death of Caffrey in the Riverwatch arson.
  • In season 5, while Maddie is interning at the district attorney's office, she briefly dates Tom Galligan, a junior attorney in the Conviction Integrity Unit. We also learn that Bosch used to be lovers with Christina Henry until he broke it off.
• Ominous Owl: Season 3 adapts the plot line from A Darkness More Than Night regarding the spooky owl left in Gunn's room, and its connection to "The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things" by Hieronymus Bosch.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: No one ever lets Officer Powers forget how he contaminated the Tony Allen murder scene at the start of season 2 by forgetting to glove up. Even three years later, Bosch still ribs him for it.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in season 5, which features two different detectives named Christinas: Christina Henry (the Conviction Integrity Unit investigator who has a vendetta against Bosch) and Christina Vega (Pierce's new partner).
• Open Heart Dentistry: Nash has a veterinarian friend who fills this role after Nash suffers a serious gunshot wound during the shootout in the Season 2 episode "Follow the Money."
• Orbital Shot: The camera does a full 360 around Bosch in episode 4-5, as he stands in the parking lot at Du-par's and contemplates the scene of Eleanor's murder.
• Parental Hypocrisy: Bosch gets upset that Maddie is interning with Honey Chandler, since Chandler is a defense attorney who works to get criminals off. Maddie points out that Bosch himself hired Chandler when he was accused of a crime, and everyone deserves the same right to defense even if Bosch thinks they're guilty. To his credit, Bosch concedes that she has a valid point.
• Polyamory: While on a stakeout in Season 5, Vega offhandedly tells Pierce that she's polyamorous. She has a husband and a boyfriend, and her husband...also has a boyfriend.
• Pragmatic Adaptation:
  • The novel A Darkness More Than Night features Bosch and Blood Work protagonist Terry McCaleb. However, as a different production company owned the movie/TV rights to the Terry McCaleb character, McCaleb's role in Season 3 is taken by a new character, Detective Jimmy Robertson.
  • Similarly, Amazon doesn't own the rights to Mickey Haller. So the Season 5 plot line adapted from Two Kinds of Truth has Honey Chandler, not Haller, come to Bosch asking him to help prove the innocence of a client.
  • The long arc about Bosch seeking his mother's murderer is loosely inspired by the Connelly novel The Last Coyote, in which Bosch investigates his mother's murder. But the TV show comes up with a completely different story and a different bad guy.
  • Eleanor Wish's fate is similar to her fate in 9 Dragons and also involves The Triads and the Tongs, but everything else about how she gets to that point is different.
  • The same thing happens with George Irving, who is based on the character of George Irving from The Drop. Like Eleanor, he meets a similar fate to his book counterpart, but in a totally different way.
• Product Placement: In-N-Out Burger gets mentioned a lot. Particularly Animal Fries.^note French fries topped with diced grilled onions, secret sauce, and melted cheese
• Promoted to Opening Titles:
  • Madison Lintz gets promoted to the main credits in season 2.
  • For season 7, Mimi Rogers (Honey Chandler) and Paul Calderon (Santiago Robertson) get main titles billing in episodes where they appear.
• Race Lift:
  • Janis Langweiser, the white prosecutor on David Storey's trial in A Darkness More Than Night, becomes the Latina Anita Benitez in season 3.
  • With the IAD cops in the Angels Flight case for season four, as two of them are black and one of them is Hispanic. None of the IAD cops in the novel are. Combined with Gender Flip for at least two characters.
• Rank Up:
  • Deputy Chief Irving becomes the full-on Chief at the end of season 2 with Tenzer's retirement, although he's only an interim chief until the end of season 3, when he finally agrees to take the job on a permanent basis.
  • Billets becomes Acting Captain for Hollywood Division for the duration of season 4, as Captain Dennis Cooper is out on a staycation.
  • Rondell Pierce is a beat cop for the first two seasons. He's promoted to Detective I shortly before the start of Season 3, which is also where he starts to take a more prominent role in the stories.
• Realpolitik: Present in the subplots related to Irving's political aspirations; ideals and principles are out the window as every move and endorsement is dependent on quid-pro-quo, blackmail, and extortion.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: After Crate and Barrel get into a collision with another patrol car while responding to an armed robbery at the start of season 5, Captain Cooper has them reassigned to CAPS work in season 5, in hopes that they won't potentially endanger fellow officers. It backfires when Crate and Barrel's work leads them to discover evidence of stat juking that Cooper is involved in.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Howard Elias is killed there is a lot of suspicion that his killer was a cop, as he was hated in the department for being a civil rights attorney who specialized in suing the LAPD. Turns out the killer was a very high ranking police official who was actually helping Elias win cases by providing inside information in exchange for a chunk of the payout when the cases were won. He killed Elias not as revenge for suing the department, but to prevent Elias from exposing his involvement.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Season 4 featured unrest and protesting in response to law enforcement mistreatment of people of African-American descent, similar to the real-life Black Lives Matter Movement.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Bosch's antics get him into a lot of trouble. His shooting a man in the pilot alone forces him to stand on a civil trial for the first half of Season 1.
  • Genuinely smart criminals can and do outsmart the police. Veronica Allen, for the first third of Season 2, is able to manipulate the police into seeing her as a sad, down-on-her-luck grieving widow, when in fact she is one half of the Big Bad Duumvirate of the season. Even after Bosch and co. manage to charge her with the murder of Father Tabakian, the case remains very shaky in court. She beats the rap after her trial ends in a hung jury and District Attorney O'Shea decides he won't go through the headache of a retrial.
  • Bosch fails to catch the bad guy who murdered his mother. But of course he does; his mother was murdered in 1979. More likely than not the bad guy would die before Bosch even gets to him, and as it turns out, he did. (Later averted when it turns out that guy wasn't the murderer.)
  • Upon learning she is dying, a prostitute colleague of Bosch's mother contacts Bosch to tell him about a lead she has regarding his mother's murder. Rather than thanking her, Bosch chews her ass madly for it; he points out that she waits until she is dying before contacting him, and that she never came forward when the case was being actively investigated.
  • In season 3, Andrew Holland schemes to discredit Bosch's testimony by hiring his private investigator Rudy Tafero and his brother Jesse to murder Edward Gunn, and plant evidence to make it look like Bosch was responsible. Neither Billets nor Edgar, who've worked with Bosch for years, buy the frameup for a second.
  • With police being under further scrutiny with the rise of BLM, misconduct incidents that get recorded on social media can cause major headaches for our main characters. Bosch publicly assaulting O'Shea in a crowded restaurant (and it getting filmed and posted on Twitter) leads to a 128 complaint getting filed against him by Internal Affairs.
  • Jerry Edgar gets shot in the shoulder, and it's NOT Only a Flesh Wound. He almost loses the arm, and his shoulder blade gets shattered by the bullet, requiring extensive surgery to repair^note Bosch: "He'll be setting off metal detectors for the rest of his life". If he's lucky and follows his rehab program religiously, he may be back to duty in about six months.
  • Crate and Barrel are much older than many of the other cops. When they get into a collision with another patrol car at the start of season 5 while responding to an armed robbery (due to Crate failing to see the other car as a result of his view being obstructed by a turning motorist), Captain Cooper thinks that it's time for them to be retired to avoid further embarrassment.
• Remember the New Guy?: Season 5 introduces Christina Henry, formerly a detective and now working for the Conviction Integrity Unit. She had a relationship with Bosch at some point in the unspecified past, blames him for ruining her career, and is set on ruining his career in return.
• The Reveal: If you know the novels, hearing that Eleanor Wish is now living in Hong Kong definitely serves as an ominous one. This actually gets averted, as Eleanor comes back from Hong Kong safe and sound and gets gunned down in L.A. instead.
• Rewatch Bonus: As with every crime story, there are several, but the prize has to go to season four and that quarter Elias is fidgeting with in episode one. Turns out, that's where his key evidence is hidden.
• Russian Roulette: Walsh does this with an undercover Harry Bosch after catching Harry snooping around the drug camp in the first episode of Season 5. Fortunately, the gun had been supplied to Harry with a filed down firing pin, so he was never in any danger.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!:
  • Part of the reason why George is tapped to go undercover into the corrupt cop ring in season 2 is because Irvin being his father makes him valuable to the rest of the crew. They'll want to bring him into their circle because they think George can provide access to dirty secrets and intelligence.
  • Early in season 3, Phil Gentry, whose daughter Becca is a classmate of Maddie's on the volleyball team, approaches Harry asking for him to help quash a speeding ticket. Harry pretends to agree to look into it, but actually has no intention of doing so. He doesn't tell Phil about it until Phil gets a notice in the mail for failing to pay the ticket, at which point Harry non-apologetically lies and claims he's tied up by red tape and that quashing tickets (by reaching out to the ticketing officer and asking him to call in sick on the day the ticket is being contested in traffic court) is not doable anymore.
  • Bradley Walker, the current president of the Police Commission. His father was a powerful city councilman, and used his influence to keep young Walker out of trouble when Walker began sleeping with prostitutes, and quashed Caffrey's investigation when Walker murdered Harry's mother. It turns out in the present day that Walker is still up to using his connections for his own gain, like using ICE to deport the welder he hired to kill Caffrey before he can testify to the RHD investigators looking for him, and being part of a scheme with Howard Elias to bilk the city out of taxpayers' money from police brutality settlements to fund his construction projects.
  • In 1996, Justin "Beto" Frank, a police cadet, went riding with some childhood friends who chose to commit a drive-by shooting. Ryan Rodgers, then a detective in Hollywood Division, interrogated Beto. Beto's police career would've been over before it even got started and he would've ended up in prison had Irving, then a lieutenant, not swooped in and shut down the interview as a favor to Beto's father, who was a Deputy Chief at the time. Irving got put on the command track soon after the interview, and Beto got to join the force. Rodgers kept a tape recording of the interview as insurance after the fact. It ends up in Barrel's hands after Rodgers dies of a heart attack and his daughter gives it to him. Barrel, well aware of the damage the tape could do to Irving's mayoral campaign, reluctantly gives it back to Melissa. A copy of it, however, makes its way to Scott Anderson, who tries to blackmail his way into becoming Irving's press secretary. Later, when Irving chooses to bow out of the race and endorse Susanna Lopez, Jack Killoran tries to blackmail Irving with the threat of releasing the tape, only for Irving to call his bluff by pointing out that Killoran will only expose himself to criminal charges.
• Sequel Hook:
  • Two from Season 3. The Koreatown Killer is never caught: a scene near the end of the last episode shows him idly biking past a smoking Harry Bosch. At the end of the season Bosch realizes that he got his mother's death wrong, and that Walker the city councilman is the actual killer of his mother. Sure enough, Season 4 has Bosch still going after Walker while the Koreatown Killer is still active.
  • And while both the KTK and the murder of Bosch's mother are tied up in Season 4, Eleanor Wish's killer is still free, setting up Season 5.
  • Season 5 ends with several. Pierce and Vega are tracking a serial killer who chops his victims up into parts. Bosch, having failed to save Elizabeth Clayton from drug addiction, is dedicating himself to investigating her daughter's unsolved murder. Edgar has come to the realization that his CI was murdered on the orders of two Dirty Cops. Irvin Irving declares his candidacy for mayor of Los Angeles. And for that matter, Eleanor's murder is still roaming free.
  • Season 7 ends with Bosch leaving the LAPD and submitting his application to operate as a licensed private detective. Meanwhile, Maddie is being interviewed after her LAPD application is processed.
• Serial Killer:
  • DNA from seven victims is found in Raynard Waits's van.
  • The Koreatown Killer—"KTK"—in Season 3 and 4, a black man on a bicycle who goes around Koreatown committing crimes against random strangers, including a series of bike thefts, carjackings, and a couple of deadly shootings. He shows up at a police town hall, in the guise of a concerned citizen, to taunt Irvin Irving for not catching him.
  • Daisy Clayton was believed to be a victim of the Backseat Butcher until it turned out that the convicted serial killer was locked up in a drunk tank when the murder happened. It was actually the work of Roger Dillon, mimicking the Butcher's work that he'd observed while cleaning up one of the serial killer's crime scenes.
• Setting Update:
  • When the Harry Bosch character debuted in The Black Echo in 1992, he was a Vietnam veteran. The series has been moved up 20 years, and Harry is a Gulf War veteran who re-enlisted after 9/11. In both versions, Bosch is a Tunnel Rat.
  • The adaptation of Angels Flight for season 4 takes advantage of the 2010s tension between the police and public and the Black Lives Matter movement.
• Shotgun Wedding: In season 6, Irvin Irving ties the knot with his second wife Jun Park shortly after finding out she is pregnant.
• Shot in the Ass: A non-comedic example. The last shot the killer delivered to Howard Elias went straight up Elias's rectum. This leads Bosch and Santiago to assume that the killer knew and disliked Elias.
• Shout-Out:
  • A tough-minded but flawed detective protagonist; an antagonist whose depraved past actions include raping his own daughter; theme music featuring the mournful, plaintive sound of an unmuted trumpet; key scenes taking place on the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River; Deputy District Attorney Lou Escobar; hmm, where have we seen this before?
  • The first Bosch novel (The Black Echo) is, in-universe, a movie based on one of Bosch's cases. Its movie poster is even almost identical to the cover of the mass-market paperback edition.
  • Bosch mentions to Jerry that the "addicts" going to a clinic could be like zombies from Night of the Living Dead (1968).
• Single Mom Stripper: Thomas "Sharkey" Niese's mother runs some kind of webcam dominatrix site out of her own home.
• Son of a Whore: Harry Bosch, whose prostitute mother was murdered when he was 12. Harry remembers being called this word-for-word when he was an inmate at McLaren Youth Hall. Andrew Holland also uses this phrase word-for-word when musing on how to ruin Bosch as a witness.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Two characters in Season 1. Julia Brasher's pulling her gun on a suspect in the novel City of Bones results in her getting fatally wounded, while in this series she's saved by her vest. Honey Chandler is killed by the Jack the Ripoff character in The Concrete Blonde, while here she survives, the Jack the Ripoff plot not being included.
  • Officer Powers, who is a much more important character in Trunk Music, is spared by the adaptation via being Demoted to Extra.
  • The character of Veronica Aliso is killed in the climax to Trunk Music, but Veronica Allen ends season 2 of Bosch alive and facing trial.
  • In season 3, Jesse Tafero lives to be arrested for his role in Edward Gunn's murder, whereas in A Darkness More Than Night, he's killed when the Tafero brothers try to take out Terry McCaleb.
  • In season 4, a great deal of Frankie Sheehan's story plays out straight from the book, but he appears to live through it this time around.
  • John Chastain appears in Season 1 as one of the IAD cops trying to take Bosch down. But while he was the bad guy in Angels Flight and gets killed in the end of the book, the Angels Flight-Howard Elias plot in Season 4 ends differently with a different bad guy, and Chastain's part is instead filled by Gabrielle Lincoln.
  • In The Last Coyote Bosch's hijinks in investigating his mother's murder wind up getting his supervisor, Lt. Harvey Pounds, killed by mistake. Pounds appears as a character in season 1 but doesn't get killed, mostly because the murder investigation is totally different than how it plays out in the novel.
  • In Two Kinds of Truth pharmacists Jose Esquivela Sr. and Jr. are murdered together by the bad guys. In Season 5 Junior steps out for coffee moments before the killers show up, and panics when he comes back and finds the cops. One of the plot threads for the season involves the LAPD racing to find Jose Jr. before the bad guys do.
  • In The Overlook, Cliff Maxwell kills Alicia Kent, and later kills himself when the police close in on him. In season 6, Alicia is arrested and indicted, and makes a plea bargain to give Maxwell up, though the deal is thrown out when evidence comes to light proving she knew Maxwell was going to kill her husband, and the season ends with her on trial.
• Stock Scream: During the parking lot shootout late in Season 2, Carl Nash shoots Krikorian, Joey Marks's driver, who dies with a Wilhelm scream.
• Streetwalker:
  • A rare example of a male Streetwalker in the person of the gay prostitute Reynard Waits picks up in episode 1-5.
  • And a second rare male Streetwalker in Season 3, Sharkey—although it's subverted in this instance as Sharkey's real racket is working with his buddies to rob the men who pick Sharkey up. It ends fatally when Sharkey is picked up by one of William Meadows' killers, who takes him to a pedestrian underpass near the Hollywood Bowl and knifes him to death.
• Surprise Witness: In Bosch's misconduct trial regarding the Preston Borders case, he and his attorney are able to locate at the last minute Terry Spencer, the man who planted the false evidence that supposedly cleared Borders. As soon as Spencer enters the courtroom Borders and his Amoral Attorney turn on each other, knowing that the gig is up. Subverted, as Spencer was only planning on exercising his 5th amendment rights if he made it to the stand.
• Suspicious Spending:
  • A couple people are suspicious of Jerry Edgar, as his clothes, shoes, and car are well beyond what he should be able to afford on his salary. However, this is justified as his real estate side gig makes him much more money than his work as a detective.
  • Averted with Bosch; he has a very nice house in a great location, but it's pretty well known in-universe that he bought it with the royalties he received when one of the cases he was involved with was adapted into a movie.
• Sword Cane: The cop who gives Harry a cane for his undercover assignment as a drug addict in Season 5 shows him that there's a knife blade concealed in the handle.
• Taking You with Me: In season 7, after the hitman hired to target Franzen, Chandler and Maddie is killed, the police find a ledger barely concealed under his bed with the full details of every contract killing that he's ever carried out. They surmise that the reason the list was so easy to find is that it's the hitman's way of taking some people down with him if he got arrested or killed.
• Technology Marches On: In universe:
  • When Bosch goes to visit his daughter in Las Vegas, she asks him if they can talk on Skype when he gets back home. He replies: "What's that, like Hulu?" He does know what Uber is, however.
  • Eleanor notes that Bosch's phone is an extremely old model so she buys him a new one. It's still a flip-phone though.
  • Harry upgrades to a smartphone by Season 2 so that he can Skype more regularly with Maddie.
  • The opening to the series, in which Bosch shoots a man who turns out to be unarmed, also has this issue. In the original version, from the novel The Concrete Blonde, Bosch was in that situation because cell phones didn't really exist yet and he was stuck without a radio to call for backup. In the series, he was in that situation after following the suspect on foot without backup in a slightly more reckless action.
  • Getting evidence of the facts of the Black Guardian case in season 4 hinges on finding a microSD card Elias had concealed very cleverly in plain sight. Needless to say, microSD cards did not figure into the plot of the 1999 source novel at all.^note In the book, Elias was led to a dark web child porn website that included photos of murder victim Stacey Kincaid.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: In season 4, Harry is not pleased when he's given two Internal Affairs cops, Snyder and Lincoln, to help with the Howard Elias investigation. He particularly resents Sgt. Snyder because she pursued a case against him in season 3 and tried to get him suspended. Snyder eventually wins his respect. Lincoln, not so much.
• Thanksgiving Episode: "Birdland" in season 3 sees Billets host a Thanksgiving dinner at her place with the cops under her command, in which Barrel botches the turkey. Meanwhile, Holland's people push the story about Bosch onto the internet.
• Those Two Guys: Crate and Barrel, who sometimes solve cases but seem mainly to exist to provide the department with two Deadpan Snarkers.
• Three-Way Sex: When Luke Rykov is arrested in Season 2 he's in bed with two hot strippers.
• Time Skip: Season 1 takes place in December 2014. Season 2 takes place in July 2015. Season 3 takes place from mid-November to early December 2016. Season 4 takes place over the last week of March 2017. Season 5 takes place in July 2018. Season 6 starts in June 2019, then skips six weeks to August 2019. Season 7 takes place from the start of January 2020 to mid-February.
• Title Drop: Most of the episode titles show up in dialogue.
• The Triads and the Tongs: Eleanor Wish gets back in with the FBI in Season 4, using her poker-playing skills to gather intel on poker-playing Chinese mobsters. It turns out her second husband Reggie Woo is from a Chinese Mobster family.
• Three Lines, Some Waiting: Since each season is generally adapting multiple books at once (except for season 5), generally each book's storyline doesn't intersect with the others.
  • Season 2 has Harry investigating the murder of Tony Allen, which is the plot of Trunk Music, while George Irving is infiltrating a ring of corrupt cops, more or less the plot of The Drop. Then the two plots turn out to be connected as the crew George is infiltrating is run by Carl Nash, the ex-cop who runs security at Hidden Highlands where Tony Allen lived.
  • In season 3, the Andrew Holland trial and the frame-up of Bosch proceed independently from the other plot, the one about Army Special Forces goons smuggling money back from Afghanistan, and the Koreatown Killer lurks in the background.
  • Season 4 does this again, with the Howard Elias murder, Eleanor Wish's investigation of the Chinese mafia that eventually ensnares Bosch, and the Koreatown Killer returning.
  • Season 5 does this with the pill mill investigation and the Preston Borders appeal. Although here, like in Two Kinds of Truth (the book the season is an adaptation of), the plot lines have some intersect when Honey Chandler unintentionally burns Bosch by running a story in the Los Angeles Times about him, which is noticed by the pill mill gangsters.
• Under Cover Cop Reveal: "Lucky" Luke Rykov, Bosch's prime suspect in a murder case, turns out to be an undercover FBI agent.
• Vanity Plate: A particularly obnoxious one from Dr. Rohan, the oxy peddler. His license plate reads "DOCYOX."
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: In-Universe, Bosch tell Julia Brasher that The Black Echo is a movie "based loosely...very loosely" on one of his cases.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Used for comic relief in Episode 1-5 when Sam Delacroix vomits all over the back of the squad car, much to Edgar's discomfort (it's his turn to clean up, as Bosch gleefully reminds him).
• Vorpal Pillow: How Reynard Waits, aka "David", disposes of his mother.
• Western Terrorists: Season 6 has an anti-government sovereign group known as the 308s. They attempt to bomb the courthouse and the Wilshire Federal Building after dirty FBI agent Clifford Maxwell kills Heather Strout's husband.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Edgar delivers one to Bosch at the end of Season 3 after figuring out from Bosch's slip about the Cadillac that Bosch watched the Edward Gunn murder happen over his cameras.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Combined with They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character. In the book Angels Flight, Elias's mistress gets appointed special master and figures significantly in the plot. In the series, Pamela Duncan only exists to be momentary eye candy in the opening scene, then later to complain that her name has been leaked to the press. Mrs. Elias doesn't even bother to be angry about her husband cheating. Then she doesn't appear on camera again although Robertson mentions getting in touch with her to get some vital information about the ring Elias was wearing when he died (which turned out to be a tool to break open a coin he was using to hide a micro SD card with his smoking gun).
  • Reggie Woo, Eleanor's second partner and stepfather to Maddie also promptly disappears from the series after season 4, although his case is still alluded to late in season 5 when Maddie reads an article about Shiwei Chen (the man who ordered Eleanor's death) being released from prison.
• Working the Same Case:
  • In season 2, Bosch and Edgar are investigating the murder of Tony Allen. Concurrently, George Irving is going undercover in a ring of corrupt cops who turn out to have been the ones that committed said murder.
  • In season 5, Bosch catches the murder investigation of Jose Esquivela, Sr. and the pharmacy robbery in Hollywood Division. The robbers are forced to carjack another man's vehicle to make their escape due to their getaway driver bailing at the sight of the police arriving, and later kill the man. The carjacking victim's body is found in a dumpster in Newton Division, so Robertson ends up catching that case. Eventually, the two join forces once Robertson connects the two cases.
• You Just Told Me: In season 5, Bosch follows his hunch and uses this technique to get Scott Anderson to reveal that Honey Chandler was the one who leaked the unflattering story about him to the Los Angeles Times. (Although it won the case, it also nearly got Bosch killed when his cover was blown.)
• You Remind Me Of Myself: Bosch takes a special interest in Sharkey, a high-risk youth in the foster care system with a sex worker mother.