MICHAEL CONNELLY'S DARK SACRED NIGHT

Night shift detective Renee Ballard is typing up her report on her investigation of a woman found dead, after days in her bathtub, earlier that night, when she notices a stranger going through the file cabinets on the other side of the detective bureau. He's Harry Bosch, and when Bosch goes off with the shift commander, Ballard isn't convinced by his explanation. A quick examination of her own and she knows Bosch lied about what he was doing, and her curiosity is piqued by what his real motives were.

It's a brilliantly understated introduction of the two detectives Michael Connelly brings together in Dark Sacred Night. When I reviewed Ballard's debut, The Late Show, last year I wrote that “Ballard is too good a character not to reappear soon, and Connelly is too good a series writer not to draw Harry Bosch into her orbit,” and so it happened. I Interviewed Michael at Waterstone's Piccadilly on that book tour, and when I asked about comparisons between the two, he said he thought of each in terms of one key word: for Ballard 'fierce' and for Bosch 'relentless'. He repeats those definitions in a short introduction to this novel, which describes his decision to tell the story primarily separately, letting us see each character through the other's eyes.

Connelly does this so well the introduction is barely required. It's sometimes overlooked, in the depth of the Bosch characterisation, just how strong the police procedural element of his stories is, and with Ballard working her night cases while joining Bosch in his relentless probing into a cold case murder. That is the killing of Daisy Clayton, the runaway daughter of a junkie Bosch met in Two Kinds Of Truth, while working undercover on the prescription opioid trade; and the mother/junkie is now living in Bosch's house. Bosch also has another cold case warming on the burner for his employer, the San Fernando PD, the assassination of a Latino gang leader a decade and a half before. Connelly mixes these stories like a magician, but the aim is not to distract, but to put the reader more fully into the mindset of the characters. The pace is as relentless as Harry, and you are left wondering, above all else, how either her or Ballard ever get any sleep.

This is what keeps, and always has kept, Connelly's work above mere gimmickry, and it comes from his understanding of those personalities he has defined in one word. As doggedly as either of them, he builds their characters through the work they do, indeed the work by which they would probably define themselves. Interviewing Michael, I asked about some of the parallels I found between them: the loss of one parent, the absence of the other; the living in a metaphorically isolated location with a tremendous view: Bosch's of the city, Ballard's of the ocean, a view that is always the same but always changing. It is not surprising that they should be drawn together, that cases should be solved, that one would save the other's life, and that there might be some tragedy and sadness involved. This is what Connelly and Bosch have always been about. If, in the end, their 'formal' agreement to work together again seems a little bit too light or contrived, it is already something to look forward to. And I would not be at all surprised to find Mickey Haller being the agency that brings Bosch and Ballard together again. In the meantime, this is a must-read detective novel, for this or any year.

Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly

Orion £20 ISBN 9780857826374

NOTE: This review will also appear at Shots (www.shotsmag.co.uk)

MICHAEL CONNELLY'S TWO KINDS OF TRUTH

Harry Bosch is still working cold cells, his office a converted cell at the San Fernando PD. But when the small town is hit by a double murder at a pharmacy, Harry's experience means he becomes the primary on the case, which he quickly realises is not just a brutal killing attached to a random robbery.

But just before the murders were called in, Bosch had been visited by an old LAPD partner Lucia Soto, accompanied by a DA and an investigator from the departments new Conviction Integrity Unit. Preston Borders, a sex killer Bosch had put away thirty years ago has petitioned for a new trial, based on the confession of another criminal to his lawyer. As the other man is now dead, the lawyer came forward, and a recheck of the evidence discovered new DNA evidence which backs up the confession. And if someone else killed Danielle Skyler, Bosch must have framed Borders with the evidence that did convict him.

Two Kinds Of Truth is Michael Connelly's second novel released this year, following The Late Show, which marked the debut of a new cop character, Renee Ballard. In my review of that book, to which you can link here, I wrote that Connelly's books are character-driven, though never shrinking as police procedurals, and often in the Bosch series resembling hard-boiled detective stories as well. I also noticed, in the previous Bosch novel, The Wrong Side Of Goodbye (link to that review here) the way Connelly's weaving together of two complex stories became driven by plot—which I thought might reflect the different approach to writing the Bosch TV series.

This novel's two stories aren't as complex, nor as deeply-layered as The Wrong Side Of Goodbye's were, but they are also, in a sense plot-driven. The pharmacy killings lead to a more serious drugs case, and Harry winds up going undercover to get to the bottom of the prescription opioid racket. Meanwhile, Harry hires his half-brother Mickey Haller to defend him in the re-opened murder case, which turns into a courtroom drama, and most interestingly, one based on what is, in effect, a locked-room mystery.

The first story is a thriller, and it really stretches the image of Harry as an action hero. Its pacing is quicker than the other story, in which the investigation has to proceed layer by layer, and much of it done by Haller and his investigator, and reported back to Harry. It also has to resolve itself like clockwork: legal clockwork, and legal is the meaning of the two truths in the novel's title. The mesh of the stories isn't as seamless as you'd hope: but both wind up being page-turners, reading to get to the solutions. It's the way in which thrillers and puzzles get to a similar place by different means; the dark interiors of hard-boiled Harry are what gets passed by to an extent. The great thing is, it doesn't matter. Undercover thriller, courtroom drama, locked room mystery. The menace of drug rings and the menace of venal DAs and Rat Squad cops. And Harry Bosch, whose character remains as deeply compelling as ever. Michael Connelly remains the best in the business.

Two Kinds Of Truth by Michael Connelly

Orion, £19.99, ISBN 9781409145554

published 31 October

note: this review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

MICHAEL CONNELLY'S LATE SHOW

Renee Ballard is a detective working the graveyard shift, nights, in Hollywood. She handles whatever comes along, and whatever comes along is why the cops call the beat the Late Show. Ballard's been exiled to the shift because of she filed a sexual assault beef against a lieutenant, and her then partner didn't back her up. Now she works nights and passes on her cases to the relevant desks in the morning; they follow up and investigate. At least most of the time she does.

The Late Show is Michael Connelly's 30^th novel (in 25 years). Renee Ballard is his first new series character since Mickey Haller made his debut way back in 2005, and like Haller, she is instantly convincing. The novel starts with her shift: moving quickly with her through a busy night highlighted by a mass killing. You're already into Ballard's head before you begin to learn the backstory, and when she's slow to pass on a case, and manoeuvres to stay in the loop on the big one, you know what she's all about.

I interviewed Michael Connelly in front of a sellout crowd at Waterstone's Piccadilly to celebrate publication of The Late Show, and suggested that, in F Scott Fitzgerald's phrase, 'character is action', and this book, like the Bosch series, like most of his books, was driven by the character of its protagonist. He said he always had a one-word description of each character in his mind: for Bosch it was 'relentless' (which ruined my next question, which would have been about Harry's 'dogged persistence'), while for Ballard it was 'fierce'.

And fierce she is, relentlessly fierce. It is Ballard's character that makes the novel work, and draws the reader in. She is both unusual and believable. She marches to the beat of a different drummer, finishing her shifts and often surfing and sleeping in a tent on the beach. At times it seems she is running on a store of built up resentment, a refusal to let things lie, that is fierce indeed.

There are comparisons to be made with Bosch, some of which Connelly himself hadn't noticed, or played down in favour of concentrating on the differences. She lost her father, with whom she lived after her parents split, early, so she was, like Bosch, alone as she grew up, despite the presence of her grandmother, at whose house she lives when she needs a house or a grandmother. Her partner, Jenkins, is similar in some ways to Bosch's Jerry Edgar: he's basically a good cop, a loyal partner, but he has other things on his mind too, so keeps the job in its place.

Obviously, Ballard is at odds with at least part of the LAPD bureaucracy, which is a defining point with Bosch. This is a key to The Late Show, because as the stories intertwine, her partner's old betrayal, and the lieutenant's animosity, both figure large.

The story resolves itself with a set-piece scene that works, but will likely work better on a screen: I asked Michael if he had considered that, or if the one hand he keeps on the Bosch TV series had an influence, and he replied that neither was a conscious decision. One thing about the character-driven series novels Connelly writes, they continue to work as procedural thrillers as well.

Ballard is too good a character not to reappear soon, and Connelly is too good a series writer not to draw Harry Bosch into her orbit, or her into his, somewhere along the line. As he said, he likes to plant seeds in his novels, which he can bring to full flowering in the future. Until then, the future is now, and it's Renee Ballard. This one's a keeper.

The Late Show by Michael Connelly

Orion, £19.99, ISBN 9781409145547

This review will also appear at Crime Time (crimetime.co.uk)