Michael Connelly has always stuck to reality to write his novels, drawing inspiration from the detectives – and lawyers – he has worked with for years to create his characters.
But Inspector Renée Ballard is unique in that she is directly inspired by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Homicide Investigator Mitzi Roberts (whom the LA Times had also interviewed in a very interesting article in 2019). And it is undoubtedly this authenticity that makes the heroine one of the most striking characters in detective literature at the moment.
In this fourth title featuring her, the inspector investigates two cases, one leading her on the trail of two serial rapists, nicknamed the “midnight men”, and the other on a murder linked to a unsolved case Harry Bosch had worked on.
This is how he reappears alongside Renée Ballard. Despite his health concerns, the retired detective is never far away, always ready to cover his back – even if he doesn’t always agree with the risks she takes. And risks, she takes more than one in this story, as well as a large number of liberties which earn her serious trouble with her superiors, but which lead to masterful, terrifying and highly distressing scenes.
With Renée Ballard, we find, 30 years later, the ardor, the tenacity and the rebellious character of a young Harry Bosch – and all the genius of the American writer who guides us here with so much intensity in the dark streets. of Los Angeles than at the heart of the crisis facing law enforcement. Because at the start of 2021, where the plot takes place, things are going badly, very badly within the LAPD. “After George Floyd and seeing that we are floundering in the COVID-19, the defunding of the police and the rest… No one works anymore […] Nobody cares. Crimes are going up, but arrests are going down and lots of people are dropping out,” Renée Ballard tells Harry Bosch.
This foray into the heart of the disillusionment and disengagement that reigns among the ranks of the LAPD is just as fascinating as the portrait of this mythical city, transformed by the pandemic, which is emerging alongside the investigation. And finding a strong and inspiring heroine alongside an iconic figure of thriller is quite simply a winning formula. While a fifth thriller with Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch has already appeared in English (Desert Star), let’s just hope that the future translation will be entitled to a more thorough proofreading than the one that left many typos in darkness and night.
darkness and night
Michael Connelly (translated from English by Robert Pépin)
Calmann-Levy
414 pages