Michael Connelly: THE DARK HOURS
With Covid restrictions in place and the
“insurrection” in the post-Election Capitol, the latest case for night-shift
LAPD detective Renee Ballard and retired cop Harry Bosch is about as on-the-button
as you can get. A murder on New Year’s Eve has a ballistic link to an unsolved ten-year-old case of Harry’s. The pair are hamstrung by lazy
and inept colleagues/superiors, a recurring theme in Michael Connelly’s books –
and presumably a factor in real-world police work.
Ballard is also investigating an ongoing serial rape case – a creepy brace of rapists called the “Midnight Men”. Both cases require dogged detective work and interviews that occasionally reveal a tiny clue to move the team forward. Connelly writes the best dialogue in current crime fiction, which gives an edge – a “zing” – to all this routine stuff. As he always does, he ratchets up the tension to a nail-biting finale. Nobody does it better in Police Department thrillers.
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