When The Closers was published in 2005, Michael Connelly's reputation as a best-selling novelist was already well established. In fact, The Closers is Connelly's eleventh novel featuring detective Harry Bosch. In Connelly's two previous Bosch novels, Lost Light (2003) and The Narrows (2004), the author had steered away from police procedural toward more conventional detective stories as his main character retired from the police force and opened his own detective agency. With The Closers, Connelly had already developed reader expectations with his previous books, and most reviewers judged the book not simply as a standalone novel but within the context of the entire Harry Bosch series.

In a review for the Miami Herald, Connie Ogle stated that Connelly "provides what is essentially a clinic on how to keep a series compelling." She also noted, "In addition to being a fascinating mystery, The Closers is a profoundly moving story about...