The Black Echo (1992) - Blog Post
“Rodentum,” Bosch said. Sakai looked at him. “Dog Latin,” Bosch told him. “Not worth a rat’s ass. He was a tunnel rat. Vietnam.”
Connelly, Michael. The Black Echo:
It was midnight when he came back inside. The place smelled of her perfume. And his own guilt. He put Frank Morgan’s Mood Indigo on the CD player and stood there in the living room without moving, just listening to the phrasing on the first solo, a song called “Lullaby.” Bosch thought he knew nothing truer than the sound of a saxophone.
Connelly, Michael. The Black Echo:
Edward Hopper’s Nighthawk
He made another one of those psychic connections with Eleanor Wish when he turned around and looked at the wall above the couch. Framed in black wood was a print of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks.
Somehow, Bosch identified with it, with that first man. I am the loner, he thought. I am the nighthawk.
Connelly, Michael. The Black Echo:
“Ask for descriptions of the two with Avery,” she said. He did. “White males,” Hanlon began. “Number one and two in suits, worn and wrinkled. White shirts. Both early thirties. One with red hair, stocky build, five-eight, one-eighty. The other, dark-brown hair, thinner. I don’t know, I’d say these guys were cops.” “Heckle and Jeckle?” Eleanor said. “Lewis and Clarke. It’s gotta be them.”
Connelly, Michael. The Black Echo:
Wayne Shorter - 502 Blues
Bosch turned on the stereo and put on a Wayne Shorter CD.
Connelly, Michael. The Black Echo:
THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
“Hieronymus Bosch.… The only thing your mother gave you was the name of a painter dead five hundred years. But I imagine the stuff you’ve seen would make the bizarre stuff of dreams he painted look like Disneyland.”
Connelly, Michael. The Black Echo:
John Coltrane Quartet - Soul Eyes (1962)
“The sun hung like a ball of copper in the driver’s-side window. He had the car radio tuned to a jazz station and Coltrane was playing” “Soul Eyes.”
Connelly, Michael. The Black Echo:
The Scream
The tunnel was blurred, forbidding darkness, like the ghastly mouth in Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream.
Connelly, Michael. The Black Echo:
There were so many of them, the jungle was turning purple from the smoke. Meadows was stoned. He popped a cassette into the portable tape player he always carried and started blasting Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” into the tunnel. It was one of Bosch’s most vivid memories, aside from his dreams, of the war.
He never liked rock and roll after that. The jolting energy of the music reminded him too much of the war.
Connelly, Michael. The Black Echo: