Harry Bosch teams up with LAPD Detective Renée Ballard in the new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly.Detective Renée Ballard is working the night beat–known in LAPD slang as “the late show”–and returns to Hollywood Station in the early hours to find a stranger rifling through old file cabinets. The intruder is retired detective Harry Bosch, working a cold case that … Bosch, working a cold case that has gotten under his skin.
Ballard can’t let him go through department records, but when he leaves, she looks into the case herself and feels a deep tug of empathy and anger. She has never been the kind of cop who leaves the job behind at the end of her shift–and she wants in.
The murder, unsolved, was of fifteen-year-old Daisy Clayton, a runaway on the streets of Hollywood who was brutally killed, her body left in a dumpster like so much trash. Now Ballard joins forces with Bosch to find out what happened to Daisy, and to finally bring her killer to justice. Along the way, the two detectives forge a fragile trust, but this new partnership is put to the test when the case takes an unexpected and dangerous turn.
Dark Sacred Night for the first time brings together these two powerhouse detectives in a riveting story that unfolds with furious momentum. And it shows once more why “there’s no doubt Connelly is a master of crime fiction” (Associated Press).
more
Loved this one! Great writer!
great page-turner from Mr. Connelly……
Worth waiting for, Harry still has it!
Michael Connelly’s new police procedural, Dark Sacred Night, is a new take on the old format. It couples a young LAPD female detective with a retired (sort of), obsessive cop to form perhaps the oddest couple in the genre. Connelly has written about each of these detectives before, but this is the first novel in which they appear together.
Moreover, it works beautifully. Ballard (her full name is Renée Ballard, but Connelly never uses it) is an attractive, still-young woman who had been through the mill of the male-dominated LAPD and requested a transfer to the night shift in the Hollywood Division to escape any additional harassment. Harry Bosch is long retired from LAPD and spending his senior years as a reserve officer in the less stressful San Fernando PD. He is obsessed by a cold case murder dating back to his LAPD years, and when he goes to the Hollywood Division one night to look through the files, he meets Ballard.
They are definitely not partners in the police sense–Ballard’s partner is conveniently on leave. At first, Ballard is dubious about Bosch, but she warms to him when he explains his interest an unsolved brutal murder of a young woman on Hollywood Boulevard nine years earlier. She offers to help to go through the records of the LAPD still existing from that time period in search of possible matches.
The hunt for the killer is on. However, each of the detectives has his or her own current cases to work on. Alternating between Ballard’s cases and her off-duty life living on Venice Beach, and Bosch’s pursuit of a Sanfers Gang murder suspect, while also worrying about his daughter at college in Orange County and caring for the mother of the murdered girl, a drug addict he brought into his own house promising to find her daughter’s killer. It makes this book a real page-turner that leaves the reader anxious to know what happens next.
This is the first novel in which Ballard and Bosch team up to solve a crime (or is it several crimes). There are indications it won’t be the last. Let’s hope so. This is a wonderful pairing that should have long legs.
If you like my reviews, please follow me on Boobkbub.
One of the best Harry Bosch books.
Combines two of Connelly’s characters in one story. Loved it.
Another really good one
Always love Michael Connelly’s books. ks.
Connelly is one of the best crime writers of this or any generation.
Always like Bosch and now he has a new female partner! A great addition to the series.
I like the way Harry Bosch has aged and found a place for himself solving homicides. The new dectective Renee Ballard is a character I liked from the beginning and the two work well together in this book. Interesting plot and Harry is his usual ‘bull in a china shop’ self following wherever the clues and his instinct leads him.
Michael Connolly always delivers a page turner. I look forward to more Bosch and Ballard books.
Nice intro to Harry teaming up with Ballard. Good story. Can’t wait for the next book.
Connelly just keeps rolling along. Great characters.
Connelly’s Harry Bosch gold mine has led him closer to the end of that character’s viability and directly into a rich new vein in Renee Ballard. Despite the age of the Bosch series, Connelly managed to very effectively write this as a stand-alone, evergreen novel. If you haven’t met Bosch or Ballard, there’s no reason you can’t start here. The writing remains incredible, consistent deep point-of-view that easily immerses readers in the scenes, locales, and interactions. Every time I read Connelly, I find it hard to believe he wasn’t ever a cop or a lawyer, which is a tremendous testiment to his research and innate understanding of those professions and the fallible humans that work in them. Along with many thousands of other readers, I’m anxiously awaiting the next installment.
Great marriage of two great characters (Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard).
I always look forward to another book by Michael Connelly, especially when the protagonist is Harry Bosch. This time he is teamed with Renee Ballard, who I’m started to enjoy more and more. It begins with Harry going through police files and Renee seeing and confronting him. Renee asks some questions and finds out what he is looking for. Its the murder book, kept by the officers, of a long ago forgotten murder of a young girl. Harry and Renee form a partnership to look into the murder. Along the way, Harry is suspended from his new job, shot at, his daughter is kidnapped, and they investigate until they solve the murder. It is as well written as any book Connelly has written in recent years and kept me turning the pages until I finished it in two days. At the end, Harry and Renee form a partnership which promises to bring us a continuation of this series.
Best Harry Bosch novel I can remember. (I think I’ve read them all). The various plot lines unfold steadily, characters are an assortment of LA psychopaths, crazies and sad cases, and Bosch mentors Renee as he pursues his form of justice.
Connely introduces a new character to the Bosch series.
Love Bosch and his interaction with Ballard made for a great read