Ballard works the night shift in Connelly’s latest

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/11/2021 (1422 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Interesting way that Los Angeles brings in the New Year, which is why LAPD Detective Renée Ballard is on duty sitting in her cruiser amid the homeless under a freeway overpass — everyone in L.A. with a gun, which is to say most of the population, fires into the air at midnight.

Who knew?

The bullets come back down, of course, which is why Ballard has taken cover, though moments later she’s flooring it to a chop shop where an allegedly reformed gangbanger lies dead.

Ballard knows bullets falling from a great height don’t normally blow a hole in the back of someone’s head, nor do they leave gunpowder burns.

You got it in one — premeditated murder.

Any chance this is but part of a far greater conspiracy whose tentacles extend from some very unexpected and dangerous places? Like that ever happens in a murder mystery, eh?

Meanwhile, Ballard has been assigned as part of a team trying to stop two rapists, who have been invading the widely scattered homes of women living alone, the rarity of two men working in tandem and no discernable links among the women stymying the police hunt.

Alas, Ballard has been saddled with a jaded partner who’s just mailing it in these days, and the male cops aren’t even close to doing the bare minimum.

Ballard was once on the homicide squad, but was demoted to the overnight shift after reporting her senior officer for sexually assaulting her.

Further infuriating her bosses, Ballard loves the dark hours.

Ballard being Ballard, she works both cases pretty much on her own, ignoring orders from her superiors, vexing her compatriots and making great progress.

A clue links one murder to an unsolved murder years before involving her mentor, retired LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch, hero of many of American police procedural superstar author Michael Connelly’s 35 books.

When last we saw Bosch, he’d gone over to the dark side of criminal defence by acting as a private investigator working with his half-brother, Lincoln lawyer Mickey Haller, to free an innocent man. Because it’s always about justice with Bosch.

Well, of course Bosch helps out Ballard — was there ever any doubt? — though Bosch often fails to mention to possible suspects that he no longer carries a badge. If they assume he’s a cop, that’s on them.

This particular New Year’s Eve being 2020, Connelly sets the tale in the heart of the pandemic and with heavy emphasis on the police reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Police, Ballard observes, have become reactive rather than proactive, afraid any move will have a social backlash, aware that the public fears them and many hate them. Very few cops in L.A. go above and beyond, and resent anyone like Ballard who does.

Connelly’s gritty novels always have sharp social angles to them, and herein Connelly focuses on rape, vile crimes which way too many male cops have no interest in solving, Connelly tells us.

There is another odious social issue, but to reveal it here would be to spoil the plot.

Connelly’s police procedurals are terrific stuff. Los Angeles is its own sprawling, breathing creature, with hidden corners which only Bosch has known — and now Ballard is bringing light and justice to those dark corners. Keep it up, Michael, and may the freeways always move smoothly for Renée Ballard.

Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin is content on New Year’s Eve to spend it quietly indoors with family and friends — none of whom has a gun.