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 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)

MICHAEL CONNELLY'S TRUNK MUSIC: MY SPECTATOR REVIEW 20 YEARS ON

Tonight I will be interviewing Michael Connelly at Waterstones in Piccadilly, to celebrate publication of his 30th novel, The Late Show, which features a new main character, LAPD night shift detective Renee Ballard. As I prepared for the interview I realised that I wrote my first review of Connelly 20 years ago. The novel was Trunk Music (his fifth Harry Bosch novel, and his sixth overall) and the review was published in the Spectator. It was, I think, his first major review in this country. Not long after that, I met Michael when he was reading in Melbourne, Florida, and I've been lucky enough to stay in touch, and to be asked to write an afterword to his collection of journalism, Crime Beat. So I thought I'd reprint that first review, from the Spectator, 8 March 1997. I also discovered that Connelly was mis-spelled throughout, and I've finally corrected that. One line from the close of the review was used as a blurb on any number of Michael's later books, which more than made up for the typo!

THE BEST FROM AMERICA

TRUNK MUSIC

by Michael Connelly

Orion,£16.99, pp.375

The Los Angeles inhabited by LAPD detective Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch resembles the paintings of his Flemish namesake. Horrors lie underneath the surface of a garden of earthly delights. The classical gives way to the modern; Trunk Music, Michael Connelly’s fifth Bosch novel, is also the first post-OJ police novel; the ghosts of Judge Itoh and Johnnie Cochrane are never far from the thoughts of cops like Bosch, nor from Bosch’s real Nemeses: lawyers, politicians, and police administrators.

When the body of soft-core porn video-maker Tony Aliso is found in the trunk of his car with two .22 shells in his skull, on a hill overlooking a concert in the Hollywood Bowl, it appears to be a classic mob hit (“trunk music”). The trail leads Bosch quickly to Las Vegas, and to an apparent solution. It also leads him back to a woman who betrayed him, in the very first Bosch novel, The Black Echo. The situation may seem old hat but Connelly makes it work by constantly confounding your expectations as he finds new angles to pursue. His stories have more twists and turns than Mullholland Drive, but they never divert you from where they should be going. Because the murder is only part of the story, the rest is Harry Bosch, his character, and his conflicts with authority, the forces of control whose toes he inevitably steps on. “Who polices the police who police the police?” is a favourite Bosch line.

Character is action, said Fitzgerald, and the way Connelly gets to the core of the situation through Bosch suggests the genre’s best writers. If Bosch resembles Hammett’s Continental Op, a lone wolf who’s honest in a corrupt world, the woman who betrayed him is his Brigit O’Shaugnessy. Trunk Music also recalls Chandler’s relishing of the sleazy Hollywood milieu and his use of Las Vegas as a contemporary Bay City, where respectable people go to be bad, and bad people go to help them. The hothouse corruption of Aliso’s wife and the deserted settings in the Hollywood hills smack of Chandler at his best.

There is no new ground broken in Connelly’s prose style, but he writes with sensitivity to nuance, the kind of undercurrent often missed in conversation. He is particularly good in the interplay of verbal and psychological warfare. This was shown best in The Last Coyote (1995) , where Bosch fences with the police psychologist who must decide if he is fit to return to duty after he has assaulted his chief, the wonderfully named Harvey “98” Pounds (as in the American equivalent of 7 stone weakling). 

Bosch uses his suspension to investigate the murder of his mother, a prostitute, who gave him his name because she had no father’s name to use. There is more than a hint of James Ellroy in the pursuit of this case, which leads to revelations of Chinatown-like corruption. Although he lacks the innovative prose fire of Ellroy, Connelly has the skill to create a powerful new story out of familiar materials to create a new story with its own power.

After The Last Coyote, Connelly changed gears with The Poet (1996), a serial killer novel which is interesting, but hampered by the use of a reporter as its protagonist. The journalist, oddly, lacks the psychic empathy to the killer that the cop may have, the kind of feeling for criminals that Bosch has. The Poet, of course, became a best-seller in America. Trunk Music marks Bosch’s return, and lives up to the high standard of The Last Coyote. This is the strongest crime series being written in America right now, and Trunk Music gets an unqualified recommendation.