Powerful New Cold Case Investigation from Michael Connelly, DESERT STAR

On November 8, the newest Michael Connelly crime novel will be released, and it features both Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch. Deftly plotted, neatly twisted, and with sharp stakes and risks, DESERT STAR proves again that Connelly's crime fiction goes much farther than "just" a crime and the hunt for the criminal—it investigates the human heart.

As the book opens, Harry's lining up pills next to a glass of water, and it's not for a good reason. In classic cop shorthand, he's thinking he's ready to "let it go." But Renée Ballard, his one-time partner who couldn't stop his job from collapsing, is at the door demanding that he open up.

Unexpectedly, after a year of her own collapse, Ballard has risen to head a new form of cold case department, one that (oh, what we learned from the pandemic) is using all volunteers and contract players to confront the monstrous backlog. She's got the ultimate lure for Harry Bosch: a stack of "murder books" all related to a family homicide that haunts him, and carte blanche to work the case properly.

"Do I get a badge?"

"No badge, no gun," Ballard said. "But you do get that desk with the six books. When can you start?"

Despite his well-fueled angers and resentments about both Ballard and the Los Angeles police, Bosch can't resist. And when he shows up at the unit the next day, there's his own mantra, painted over the entrance: "Open-Unsolved Unit. Everybody Counts or Nobody Counts."

Bosch shook his head. Everybody counts or nobody counts was the philosophy he always brought to homicide work, but it was his personal philosophy. It wasn't a slogan and especially not one he liked seeing painted on a wall. It was something you felt and knew inside. Not something advertised, not something that could even be taught.

Whether he likes it on the wall or not, it's still driving him. Nobody in the new unit recalls his cases solved, his commitment to the job—they're all new in some way—except Renée. And she's trying to manage the unmanageable and bring Harry back for the sake of what he does so well.

To Harry Bosch's disappointment and frustration, there's another case he and Renée need to solve, in full view of the rest of the team: the murder of the daughter of a city councilman. That unsolved crime is what put the councilman behind re-starting the cold case unit. So as Bosch scrambles for traction on the crime that's dogged him, he's also got to cuddle up to the new tools available, like DNA connections, and wrap up the simpler case as well.

The plot's great, a classic Connelly spinning of how police work tangles and wrestles and sometimes succeeds. But at the heart of DESERT STAR is the mentor relationship Harry has with Renée, along with his adjustment to her fully capable investigative skills now in place. So, scrap any father–daughter images, if he had them. In fact, one of his first actions in the new "team" environment undercuts Ballard badly, as he takes off out of the office like a lone dog on the trail.

Renée Ballard's quick realization is, "Putting him on a team did not make him a team player. That was not in his DNA." She intends to patch the gaps he's creating.

But her own insecurities surface in wrestling for control with Bosch and making clear that he's got to do the councilman investigation at higher priority. When he concedes, he tells her, "By the way, you're not a shrew, whatever a shrew is. Okay? More like a desert star." "Whatever that is." "It's a flower that's undaunted by heat and cold. By anything. Even an old guy set in his ways."

While Ballard accepts this half of an apology and tugs gently at the leash to get Bosch on track again, it's still clear that he's exactly what he's said: an old guy set in his ways. And that may jeopardize the cases underway, the renewed existence of the investigative unit, and his life.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Newest Mickey Haller Crime Fiction from Michael Connelly, THE LAW OF INNOCENCE

 [Originally published in New York Journal of Books]

“Connelly spins a story where the risk is life itself, and the collateral damage may be integrity. Watching Mickey Haller work out how to balance the two makes this a compelling crime novel that lingers in value long after the last page.”

What is the difference between innocent and not guilty? Michael Connelly’s The Law of Innocence, extending his “Lincoln Lawyer” series, confronts Mickey Haller with that important issue, in painful ways. Mickey knows he hasn’t murdered a former client who never paid the bill for Mickey’s defense work. But when the man’s corpse is found by police, jammed in the trunk of the Lincoln that Mickey drives, with the killing bullet smashed on Mickey’s own garage floor … who’s going to believe he didn’t do the job?

Connelly writes two significant California mystery series. One features police investigator Harry Bosch, always in pursuit of criminals and punishment for crime. Mickey, on the other hand, is a defense attorney whose demand for justice takes a very different form: If the State can’t prove a case against his clients, they shouldn’t lose their freedoms. That’s the “not guilty” side: when a jury concludes the crime hasn’t been successfully (“beyond reasonable doubt”) pinned on someone.

The frustration for Mickey in this book is, he knows he’s innocent. A handful of people—his staff, his ex-wife Maggie, his daughter, and thank goodness, his half-brother Harry Bosch—accept this innocence. But the frame against him is so clever and complete that even his attorney friends have doubts about him.

In placing Mickey in the hands of the law and a furious prosecutor who’s convinced he committed the crime, Bosch sends his protagonist to prison for months. Living on three meals a day of bologna sandwiches makes Mickey’s clothing hang loose, and he struggles to stay alive as the people he’s offended in the past, including sheriff's deputies who run the prison where he's held, see a chance for brutal revenge.

Connelly spins this series as a first-person narrative, which slows the pace. There are plenty of action scenes, but also a lot more inner conversation than in the Harry Bosch books. Micky reflects:

I had no illusions about my innocence. I knew it was something only I could know for sure. And I knew that it wasn’t a perfect shield against injustice. It was no guarantee of anything. The clouds were not going to open for some sort of divine light of intervention.

I was on my own.

… In the law of innocence, for every man not guilty of a crime, there is a man out there who is. And to prove true innocence, the guilty man must be found and exposed to the world.

The back story of the murder itself—who profits, from what looks like a pure case of revenge against Mickey?—must be determined in order to find that “guilty man.” Working under a near-impossible deadline, and directed by Mickey from his cell much of the time, his team quickly finds promising threads. But they lead, in multiple ways, to dead ends.

Along the way, two big changes take place in the people around him, as Mickey sweats his way to discovery of the pieces: his half-brother Harry Bosch aggressively takes his side (even financially), and Mickey falls back in love with this daughter’s mother. The feeling might even be mutual. Will it make them more successful in solving the crime in time to get Mickey off the hot seat, though?

Passionate followers of the Bosch series may not find much to enjoy in The Law of Innocence: Bosch’s appearances are brief and not very interesting, compared to the character himself. That’s part of the cost of Connelly’s choice to write Mickey “from the inside.” The criminal enterprise that forms the back story of the murder is also rather weak. That said, Connelly carries out what he’s endlessly powerful in doing: He spins a story where the risk is life itself, and the collateral damage may be integrity. Watching Mickey Haller work out how to balance the two makes this a compelling crime novel that lingers in value long after the last page.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

The BIG Questions of Our Lives: SUMMER OF THE DEAD, Julia Keller

It's publication day for Julia Keller's newest West Virginia mystery featuring scrappy county prosecutor Bell Elkins and her team -- especially Sheriff Nick Fogelsong. And I have two copies arriving in today's mail, because another Bell Elkins book means another hard look at the tragic forms that love and passion can take, the ones that lead to crime.

Keller, who was born in West Virginia, offers us the hardscrabble town of Akers Gap and its surrounding mountains, where coal is not just a resource but a lifeline and also crippling. In this third in the series (after A Killing in the Hills and Bitter River), Bell Elkins is faced with what looks like a serial killer in her territory, someone making the nights terminally unsafe. That's high pressure on her and the sheriff. And as the public pressure rises to find the killer and stop the murders, Bell's badly handicapped by her commitment to house her sister Shirley, still on probation after release from a prison term for the death of the sisters' father many years ago.

And Shirley's making things really tough on Bell's professional standing: Swept up in an investigation of a low-life bar knifing, Shirley makes a point of having a "get out of jail free" card in her relationship to Bell. Cut the tie? No -- there are reasons Bell feels like she owes more than she can pay, to her dodgy, emotionally broken, and unpleasant sis.

So in addition to investigating the murders -- yes, of course there will be connections to the drug trade in the region, which Keller has already painted so vividly during Bell's two previous investigations -- Bell is chasing her sister and reliving the early trauma of her own life. And she's got to do it without her usual anchor of taking care of her teenaged daughter.

Keller spins the risks and dangers at a ferocious pace. We're inside some other characters too, including Lindy Crabree, a coal miner's daughter doing the best she can to keep her failing father comfortable in a very bizarre way. As clues and twists pull Bell back toward Lindy and this outwardly different father-daughter relationship, personal risk to Bell rises drastically.

But Keller also pulls the reader firmly onto Lindy's side. And her descriptions of mountain life braid a love for the region with an understanding of what we all sacrifice for the people and places we love -- even when those people and places may kill us. Keller's deft touch allows her to insert startlingly vivid chunks of description, even while Bell races toward a confrontation with the killer or killers involved:

Freddie's long white Silverado truck was still parked in front of the house. He always parked it there, leaving the driveway free as a a workspace for his loving labors on the Thunderbird, which he kept at the upper end of the concrete slab, next to the house. The high polish on the Thunderbird's tubular flanks gave it a sleek, missile-like look. You could tell how much Freddie Arnett loved this car, how much he'd fussed over it, gushed over it, pampered it; it had been unconditionally adored. Same was true for his grandson, Bell guessed. She knew how tempting it was to give everything to a beloved child, to make any sacrifice. It wasn't always the right thing to do -- it was almost never the right thing to do -- but you did it, anyway. Couldn't help yourself.

"Okay, old man," Bell murmured. Even if someone had been standing right next to her, they couldn't have made out the words; her voice was soft and filled with grim wonder. "What happened here? Who the hell did this to you -- and why?"

It took her a moment to realize that she was talking to the dead. And another moment to realize that it didn't bother her one bit.

Keller's mysteries earn high praise from crime fiction pro Michael Connelly, and it's well deserved. Deeply conflicted characters that are worth caring about; hard lives that lead some to crime, and some (like Lindy) to powerful self-sacrifice; a region of West Virginia that's been left behind in many ways but that suffers from the same pressures of our cities and suburbs; all of this, Keller puts on the table.

And she reminds us that whether in crime or in our own lives, scars are rarely a sign of a closed door on our past. Sometimes they cover shrapnel that has to emerge in its own time, as painful and dangerous in its removal as in the original explosions that lodge it within us.

Timothy Hallinan's Junior Bender Series: A Thief Who Solves Crimes

I ran across Timothy Hallinan's mysteries in his Poke Rafferty series, set in Thailand -- a series that includes all the best of international crime fiction, from exotic setting to eccentric characters to humor and affection. And it's a great series to collect, read, and enjoy.

But if I could take only one Hallinan series to a desert island, it's the Junior Bender series that I'd pack.

In this era of "everybody is writing some YA if they can," the series name and covers spark some confusion -- this is NOT a series for "young adults." "Junior" happens to be the name (and his real first name, thanks to his long-gone father) of Bender himself, initiated into the world of elegantly committed theft at the age of 17, by legendary southern California burglar Herbie Mott. Bender's immaculately conceived crimes involve careful scoping of a high-end Los Angeles-area home, meticulous timing (never staying too long inside), and following Herbie's advice: Never take something away that the owner can't afford, emotionally, to give up.

As an expert thief of fine items, Junior Bender also cultivates knowledge of the art world and its values, and of course a very specialized set of fences where he's known for bringing top material and being a savvy negotiator.

But Junior's career has two peculiar quirks to it. First, he has an ex-wife and a teenage daughter, both of whom he loves and respects, and he takes care to not embarrass them with his work. And second, he's burdened with a second career: Private investigator on behalf of crooks in his area.

It's in some ways an accidental second career. His friends need his help, is what it boils down to. But when Irwin Dressler, most powerful and wealthy criminal leader in California, takes an interest in Junior's (nonexistent) business plan, this "help out the criminals" line threatens to take over Junior's life, no matter his own disagreement with the notion. Dressler is not one of those people you can safely say "no" to. "

"Junior, I'm disappointed in you."

If Dressler had said that to me the first time I'd been hauled up to his Bel Air estate for a command appearance, I'd have dropped to my knees and begged for a painless death. He is, after all, the Dark Lord in the flesh. But now I'd survived him once ...

That's the start of the third in the series, THE FAME THIEF. And Irwin Dressler's point is, Junior is the only person in this line of work -- he has a solo franchise: "That whole thing you go going? Solving crimes for crooks? And living through it?" Dressler is sure Junior should capitalize on this monopoly, and expand.

Of course, it's inevitable that Dressler himself has a task he wants Junior to tackle: restoring the reputation of a once-glamourous Hollywood actress who lost her own career in a sting operation during decades ago. Why is Dressler so concerned about Dolores La Marr? Don't ask. By the time you realize Dressler's motive, it's way too late for Junior to get out of this complicated situation where it seems like a lot of people want to kill him. Such a "nice burglar boy" -- how come he's in so much trouble (again)?

Soho Crime cast aside all current publishing expectations, to pull all four of the books in this series into the market within a mere 18 months -- so when you finish devouring the fun and cleverness of THE FAME THIEF, you can backtrack to Crashed  and Little Elvises. Or just jet straight ahead to book 4, which hit the shelves a couple of weeks ago: HERBIE'S GAME.

You know how John Le Carré captured the longing of British spies to respect themselves and have a country worth being loyal to? (It's okay, not everyone's mystery reading ranges into espionage ... mine does, though.) How Tony Hillerman wove his Western Indian detectives in a blanket of hungry friendships, loyalties, and spiritual search? Or Michael Connelly put onto the pages the detective whose roots involve self-sacrifice but who can't bend enough to stay on good terms with his employer? How about Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache, who insists that there's goodness worth honoring and fighting for, even as his own police force and his retreat in the almost perfect village of Three Pines are repeatedly undermined by the forces of evil, in ways we recognize from our own efforts to make something good from our lives?

Heavens, don't assume from that long paragraph that Hallinan is writing "literary stuff." He's definitely not -- his mysteries focus on crime capers in the spirit of Donald Westlake and even Janet Evanovich (although there's more love than lust in Hallinan's books, actually).

But here's the startling part. HERBIE'S GAME, the fourth (and for the moment final) in the Junior Bender series, takes the best darned path I've read in years into struggling with what our fathers want for us, how we sometimes lose the connection with them on the surface, how we almost never lose the important ties to them, and why it's all worthwhile in the long run.

Of course, it's not his dad that Junior's having to exhume and explore here -- it's Herbie Mott, the man to brought him into his life of crime, nurtured his skills, taught him his values, and who ... oddly ... seems to have done that with a number of other fatherless young men. He taught Junior to be like Robin Hood. Sort of. Showed him why it's important to wear booties while burglarizing ("they have that DNA now"). And helped him to deal with his own past:

"Let me tell you something. ... Don't think you know everything about your father. You loved him at one point, I can tell, because you wouldn't be so angry now if you hadn't. Well, the father you hate now is the same person as the one you loved. Just don't -- put people in boxes like that. You have know idea whether you really know someone."

Turns out, Herbie himself is one of the people that Junior didn't know as well as he thought he did. And suddenly, Junior Bender is tangled up with a team of professional killers for hire, female and male, as he struggles to discover what Herbie's final scheme had been, and how it got the master of the trade murdered. There's some time pressure, too: If Junior can't solve this really quickly, it seems likely he'll either be killed himself or end up in jail. Or both.

I know I'll be re-reading the series. But most of all, HERBIE'S GAME is the book I'll be going back to. It's a great ride as crime fiction, as entertaining capers in Los Angeles, as insight into professional theft (I am definitely upgrading the house locks!). And it's one level more. Thanks, Tim Hallinan (and Soho Crime). Good one.

Michael Connelly, Dilys Awards, 1996 and 1997

There is actually a drawback to the phenomenal success and sales of each new Michael Connelly crime novel: Readers are always looking ahead to the next book, which now means finding out which of Connelly's two current series protagonists -- Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller -- will take the lead in the next book from this master of the detective novel. Even more intriguingly, how will the two interact, now that Connelly is bringing them into the same books?

With all that forward motion, sometimes I forget to look back at (re-read!) Connelly's earlier work. His noted The Black Echo and The Black Ice (from 1992 and 1993, his first and second books) were extraordinarily powerful early work; his fourth and fifth engaged independent mystery booksellers so securely that they swept the Dilys Award (for the book those sellers in IMBA have most enjoyed providing to readers) two years in a row.

So here's a refresher: In The Last Coyote, LAPD detective Harry Bosch goes onto "involuntary stress leave" for attacking his boss -- and finds himself investigating the murder of his own mother. And in The Poet, crime reporter Jack McEvoy begins to investigate police suicides, only to discover a serial killer at work. (The Poet was reissued in 2004 in softcover with an introduction by Stephen King.)

Although The Poet appeared to be a stand-alone diversion from the Harry Bosch series, Connelly would later tie its characters back into more of his fiction.

It's no exaggeration to say that early on, Connelly established a high standard for American crime fiction. Each of his subsequent books has been compared against that standard. No wonder we race for each new title. On November 26, the newest will release in the United States: The Black Box. It's a Harry Bosch title, dipping into 20 years of Bosch's career and files. After this Dilys week is over (and I hope you're reading ALL of our posts for it!) and the signed copies of S. J. Rozan's Ghost Hero have been awarded (here at Kingdom Books, we'll give them on Sat. Oct. 20 as part of Archer Mayor's 2 pm event), there will be about five weeks until the new Michael Connelly. Think you can fit in re-reading all the earlier titles?

I might try it.