Review: THE NIGHT FIRE, Michael Connelly

• 
  This edition available on Kindle (Amazon)
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07NL757ZF
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown and Company (October 22, 2019)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 449 pages
• #3 in the Ballard and Bosch series 

Synopsis (Amazon)

Harry Bosch and LAPD Detective Renée Ballard come together again on the murder case that obsessed Bosch's mentor, the man who trained him.

Back when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective, he had an inspiring mentor who taught him to take the work personally and light the fire of relentlessness for every case. Now that mentor, John Jack Thompson, is dead, and his widow gives Bosch a murder book, one that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD twenty years before -- the unsolved killing of a troubled young man.

Bosch takes the murder book to Detective Renée Ballard and asks her to help him discover what about this crime lit Thompson's fire all those years ago. As she begins her enquiries -- while still working her own cases on the midnight shift -- Ballad finds aspects of the initial investigation that just don't add up.

The bond between Bosch and Ballard tightens as they become a formidable investigation team. And they soon arrive at a disturbing question: Did Thompson steal the murder book to work the case in retirement, or to make sure it never got solved?
Written with the intense pacing and masterful suspense that have made Michael Connelly "the hard-boiled fiction master of our time" (NPR), The Night Fire continues the unofficial partnership of two fierce detectives determined not to let the fire with burn out.

My Take

I've read this for discussion with my U3A Crime Fiction group as our last novel for 2024. Other American novels we've read this year have struggled to find popularity and I'm not sure what the reaction will be to this one, despite Connelly's general popularity. I have not read any of the Ballard and Bosch series before, but this was a book set from the library, so perhaps I will also pay the penalty for embarking mid series.

Detective Renée Ballard works 'The Late Show', the notorious graveyard shift at the LAPD. It's thankless work for a once-promising detective, keeping strange hours in a twilight world of crime. Harry Bosch has recently retired although he "forgot" to hand his badge in and is not averse to using it when it suits him. He has also recently discovered that he has acute myeloid leukemia. He has begun chemo therapy but feels he has a death sentence hanging over him. He has recently had a knee replacement and this recovery is limiting his ability to move quickly.

When Harry attends the funeral of his former mentor John Jack Thompson, Thompson's wife gives him a "murder book" related to a cold case from 20 years before. As Ballard and Bosch begin to look at the case they ask themselves why Thompson took the book with him on his retirement, when by rights he should have handed it in. Even stranger is the fact that Thompson does not seem to have made any steps to investigate the case himself. Why is that?

Both Bosch and Ballard are also working on other cases, and so this novel is really a police procedural, exploring the sorts of cases that occupy the time of LAPD detectives. While Bosch knows some of those still working in LAPD he is not popular and neither is Ballard. And of course there will come a time when the cases have elements in common. Bosch for example is doing some investigative and consulting work for his half-brother Mickey Haller who is defending a young man accused of murdering a judge.

The novel is structured to reflect the actions being taken by the two individual detectives. The reader is told by section heading whose P.O.V. it is.

So what will my group make of this novel?

• the US court and justice system is very different to the Australian/British one and I think they will have a problem accepting some of the scenarios;
• the partnership between Ballard and Bosch is an interesting one, highly productive, but once again a scenario that probably could not happen "here";
• the language of the novel might cause a problem: e.g. the corpse of a homeless man incinerated in his tent is referred to as a "crispy critter." We all know what that means but it's use as common terminology would not happen "here".
  There is also a lot of swearing, not a common feature of local crime fiction novels.
  There is also use of other local terminology e.g. "Did you roll the coroner out yet?" and referring to patrol cars congregating at an all night ruck park: "They can all code seven there without leaving their zones". Ballard "hooked a left down the hallway."
  I felt like I was getting a lesson in LAPD "speak".
• the structure of the murder book - the chrono, the inclusions,
• do the resources that the LAPD have available to them exist in Australia? e.g. the bullet archive - the national database that holds unique ballistic details and cartridge casing found at crime scenes
• there are times when both Ballard and Bosch ignore proper procedure. They also put themselves in considerable danger.
  

It is a very detailed and quite long novel. Lots for an Australian reader to take in.

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

• THE OVERLOOK
• THE BRASS VERDICT
• THE CONCRETE BLONDE
• 4.3, THE REVERSAL
• 4.4, SUICIDE RUN
• 4.4, ANGLE OF INVESTIGATION
• 4.5, THE POET
• 4.5, FAIR WARNING

Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch series
   1. The Late Show (2017)
   2. Dark Sacred Night (2018)
   3. The Night Fire (2019)
   4. The Dark Hours (2021)
   5. Desert Star (2022)
   6. The Waiting (2024)