1544. The Night Fire by Michael Connelly

I’m stunned that there is no review of Michael Connelly’s The Night Fire in this blog. I’ve read it before and just listened to it again in audiobook format (via Libby, the library app). This story is, once again, Connelly at his best. It’s the third of five novels in his Renee Ballard series. Ballard is a compelling character who Connelly could develop into his primary protagonist.

 

Briefly, in this novel, Bosch has been forcibly retired from his LAPD detective job, and he is temporarily working on cold cases for the San Fernando PD. He engages Renee Ballard’s help with getting data from LAPD that he can no longer access as he does cold cases for San Fernando as well as his own list of cold unsolved cases from his years with the LAPD. For the most part, he continues to be shunned by the LA detectives because of their misperception that he has gone over to the dark side by not blindly supporting all police work and actually assisting his half-brother defense lawyer Mickey Haller (The Lincoln Lawyer).

 

There was a nighttime fire in the tent of a vagrant that resulted in the guy’s death, and it was written off as an accident, a theory that did not sit right with Bosch. As is typical of Connelly, while the main plot develops, Bosch and Ballard solve some other cases while trying to disguise the fact from the other detectives that Bosch is involved. It’s one of the peripheral stories that unexpectedly gets tied to the main plot. The book is a rapid page-turner, and it gets a 5/5 rating from me. It was a pleasure to listen to this story (which also got some airtime in the tv series).