Connelly, Michael The Late Show Review
THE LATE SHOW is Connelly’s 30th book and
it introduces a new lead character--a woman named Renee Ballard. One thing you
can count on is that Mr. Connelly will give you a solid ride. He knows the back
streets of Hollywood and his police procedures backwards and forwards. You can
also count on the fact that his lead character pushes the edges of the rules,
but not so far as to become unbelievable.
Ballard has been relegated to the so called “Late Show” as a
penalty for resisting the advances of a senior officer. Overnight cases are often
small-time and routine and she does these happily, but when large cases do
appear she goes after them like a bloodhound in heat. Her juices start to flow when
faced with a trans man is assaulted and left for dead in a parking lot. Before
she has time to take a breath comes a vicious shooting of several people in a night
club.
Since Ballard is a new character for Connelly, we do get a
fair amount of personal background as she digs into the cases. It points to a
difficult early life and a still troubled current one. She had an absent mother
and a father who died in some kind of surfing incident and now spends a lot of
time with her elderly grandmother and paddleboarding at the beach.
Needless to say, she gets the bad guys a bunch of twists and
push-back from the higher-ups. I am intrigued enough to look for the second
novel in the series. It is called DARK SACRED NIGHT and in it she gets together
with Connelly’s iconic major character—Detective Harry Bosch.
I give it a 4 out of 5.
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