Thursday, July 11, 2019

Crime & Beyond Book Club Reads Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly


The Denver-based book club Crime & Beyond recently discussed the latest book by Michael Connelly in the Renee Ballard series and Kerry Hammond is here to tell us what they thought.

Michael Connelly is one of our go-to authors. We enjoy his writing and have read books in each of his series: Mickey Haller, Harry Bosch, and Renee Ballard. Dark Sacred Night is the second in the Renee Ballard series, but also features Harry Bosch. It’s the 21st book for Harry Bosch, but is also being listed as a Ballard & Bosch novel. Try and keep up.

Renee Ballard is an LAPD detective who has been put on the night shift, also known as “the late show.” She finds a man rifling through her files and learns that it’s retired detective Harry Bosch. Harry is working on a cold case and Renee wants in. They decide to team up to try and solve the murder of 15-year-old runaway Daisy Clayton.

The book got decent ratings and we had a great, in-depth discussion about all of the details of the story. We usually get a good discussion going because Connelly’s books have a lot of side investigations and aspects of each case the detectives are investigating. His books tend to be fast, enjoyable reads.

We were torn on whether or not we loved the Bosch-Ballard match up. Half of us liked it and the other half weren’t quite as taken with the idea. We felt that it wasn’t entirely fair that Ballard only got one book on her own before Bosch came on the scene. We didn’t get enough time to flesh out her character as an individual; Harry can kind of take over any scene he’s in. We would love more character development in addition to the plot driven stories Connelly is known for. We'll have to see what's in story for Ballard and Bosch next time.


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