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.
No comments:
Post a Comment