DARK SACRED NIGHT by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown and Company October 2018) ISBN# 0316484806 / 9780316484800
Summary from the Goodreads website . . . . .
LAPD Detective Renée Ballard teams up with Harry Bosch in the new thriller from #1 NYT bestselling author Michael Connelly.
Renée Ballard is working the night beat again, and returns to Hollywood Station in the early hours only to find a stranger rifling through old file cabinets. The intruder is retired detective Harry Bosch, working a cold case that has gotten under his skin.
Ballard kicks him out, but then checks into the case herself and it brings a deep tug of empathy and anger.
Bosch is investigating the death of fifteen-year-old Daisy Clayton, a runaway on the streets of Hollywood who was brutally murdered and her body left in a dumpster like so much trash. Now, Ballard joins forces with Bosch to find out what happened to Daisy and finally bring her killer to justice.
My review on the Goodreads website . . . . .
Just as Ian Rankin has allowed Inspector Rebus to age in his series of Scottish detective novels, Michael Connelly has followed a similar approach with senior detective Harry Bosch in his Los Angeles adventures.
Both have reduced roles in their later years, sometimes as consultants or part-time/temporary employees rather than full-time-with-benefits members of the police force. However, both have such a strong sense of public duty and ingrained principles that they approach the work as if they were still younger, with the same vigor and intensity, often putting in extra hours to pursue the most meager of threads/clues.
Newer character Renee Ballard meets Harry while he's working on a cold case and quickly decides to assist him, describing it as her "hobby case" to her commanding officers. During a discussion while perusing some old police records with him, Ballard makes a statement that captures the essence of Harry Bosch: "I heard you're the kind of guy who never lets the string run out - - your old partner called you a dog with a bone.”
There's more that reveals the character of Bosch later, when he opens the files for a cold-case review of the murder of a gang leader: " He (Bosch) had always operated according to the axiom that everybody counts in this world or nobody counts. This belief dictated that he must give each case and each victim his best effort."
Twenty-one novels into the Harry Bosch saga might mean that Connelly could take it easy, as the formula has been long established, and he could crank out another story with ease. Connelly never takes it easy. This is also the thirty-first novel set in the L.A. universe of Harry Bosch, and each one is
different and feels fresh and original. He's a master of modern day detective fiction.
The pairing up of Bosch with Ballard is genius, and I hope it's not the last time. Connelly also wisely divides the novel into short sections, each one alternating from the point of view of either Bosch or Ballard.
In the real world it would be unlikely that anyone in police work would have the luxury of working just one case at a time, and the events in Dark Sacred Night bear that out. While working together both Bosch and Ballard pursue their own separate assignments and investigations - - and each of these is revealing and engaging.
The two detectives, while different in personalities and world views, have many things in common. Both have been wrongfully blamed and demoted in their careers, but for different reasons. Both have a determination and approach that often bends the strict rules of police work, and neither of them is willing to abide by the politics of law enforcement. They support and defend each other, including some life-threatening situations where rescue is required.
You can't go wrong with a Michael Connelly story.
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