Michael Connelly

Listen to two clips from the Desert Star audiobook, read by Titus Welliver and Christine Lakin.

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“ranks up there with Connelly’s best.”
– Publishers Weekly Starred Review

“Longtime Bosch followers will be taking deep breaths after this one’s superb finale, especially given its implications for the future.”
– Booklist Starred Review

“Another home run for Connelly …The plot is an exceptional piece of crime drama, and the short chapters help keep the expectations high and the flow smooth. The narrative is unapologetic hard-edged cop-speak, and Bosch and Ballard rock every page. VERDICT Fans of police procedurals, dark cat-and-mouse mysteries, and Connelly’s iconic characters will find this soon-to-be-best-seller absolutely unputdownable.
– Library Journal Starred Review

“Michael Connelly is at the top of his game with Desert Star. His crisp prose propels the action and takes us through the gritty L.A. streets and the starkly beautiful desert. Whether or not you’re already a fan of the Ballard and Bosch books, this is a must-read with a heart-wrenching final twist.”
– Apple Books, Best Books of November

“One of the best books of the year, Connelly brings back both Ballard and Bosch for yet another suspense-filled, page-turning experience that shows once again why he’s one of the greatest crime writers to ever do it.”
– The Real Book Spy

“Readers will be glad to know that Connelly is still bringing the same intensity and atmosphere to his iconic series.”
– CrimeReads

“The latest in Connelly’s Harry Bosch/Renee Ballard series is a gift to fans with its engrossing plot and intriguing characters delivered by exceptional narrators.”
– AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner (audiobook review)

“Each of Connelly’s novels about Bosch shows us a different side of this popular character and his 24th installment, the superb “Desert Star,” continues that trajectory.”
– Oline Cogdill, South Florida Sun Sentinel

“another winner.”
– Red Carpet Crash

“Connelly continues to reframe the police procedural”
– Alta Journal

The Best Books Of 2022: Crime & Thrillers
– Waterstones

“At this point, Connelly could be forgiven for phoning it in, but his latest entry in the Bosch canon is as sharp as his first.”
– The Washington Post

“nobody else does [it] better.”
– Kirkus Reviews

“A strong, emotional and as ever brilliantly written police procedural that really hits the spot. Ballard and Bosch are a fantastic team and this is an unmissable contribution to the series.”
– Live and Deadly

“Both cases are absorbing and Ballard’s outings with Bosch have made her a sharper (and crankier) character. Best of all, Bosch gains intriguing depth as he faces down death, unsure of the legacy he’s leaving his daughter, also now a cop, or the corpse-strewn streets of Los Angeles.”
– Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“…a richly emotional entry in this superb series… “Desert Star” — named for a tiny, resilient flower — is a thrilling mystery, and a resonant novel that marks turning points for Bosch and Ballard.”
– Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times

“Desert Star will further cement Connelly’s reputation as the master of modern crime fiction, and few will ever equal his achievement.”
– Matt Nixon, Daily Express (UK)

“Politics, corruption, violent deaths and cutting edge forensics make this another masterpiece that feels like it’s a true crime documentary
laced with hard-boiled suspense.”
– Alex Gordon, Peterborough Telegraph (UK)

“This is brilliant crime writing, worthy of Raymond Chandler.”
– Sydney Morning Herald

THIS EVENT WAS HELD ON DECEMBER 6. If you’ve read the book and want to watch the recording of the book club event, Click Here. It is full of spoilers so only watch if you’ve read the book.

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1

Bosch had the pills lined up on the table ready to go. He was pouring water from the bottle into the glass when the doorbell rang. He sat at the table, thinking he would let it go. His daughter had a key and never knocked, and he wasn’t expecting anyone. It had to be a solicitor or a neighbor, and he didn’t know any of his neighbors anymore. The neighborhood seemed to change over every few years, and after more than three decades of it, he had stopped meeting and greeting newcomers. He actually enjoyed being the cranky old ex-cop in the neighborhood whom people were afraid to approach.

But then the second ring was accompanied by a voice calling his name. It was a voice he recognized.

“Harry, I know you’re in there. Your car’s out front.”

He opened the drawer under the table. It contained plastic utensils, napkins, and chopsticks from takeout bags. With his hand he swept the pills into the drawer and closed it. He then got up and went to the door.

Renée Ballard stood on the front step. Bosch had not seen her in almost a year. She looked thinner than he remembered. He could see where her blazer had bunched over her sidearm on her hip.

“Harry,” she said.

“You cut your hair,” he said.

“A while ago, yeah.”

“What are you doing up here, Renée?”

She frowned as though she had expected a warmer reception. But Bosch didn’t know why she would have, after the way things had ended last year.

“Finbar,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“You know what. Finbar McShane.”

“What about him?”

“He’s still out there. Somewhere. You want to try to make a case with me, or do you want to just stand on your anger?”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you let me in, I can tell you.”

Bosch hesitated but then stepped back and held up an arm, grudgingly signaling her to enter.

Ballard walked in and stood near the table where Bosch had just been sitting.

“No music?” Ballard asked.

“Not today,” Bosch said. “So, McShane?”

She nodded, understanding that she had to get to the point.

“They put me in charge of cold cases, Harry.”

“Last I heard, the Open-Unsolved Unit was canceled. Disbanded because it wasn’t as important as putting uniforms on the street.”

“That’s true but things change. The department is under pressure to work cold cases. You know who Jake Pearlman is, right?”

“City councilman.”

“He’s actually your councilman. His kid sister was murdered way back. It was never solved. He got elected and found out the unit was quietly disbanded and there was nobody looking at cold cases.”

“And so?”

“And so I got wind of it and went to the captain with a proposal. I move over from RHD and reconstitute the Open-Unsolved Unit—work cold cases.”

“By yourself?”

“No, that’s why I’m here. The tenth floor agreed: one sworn officer—me—and the rest of the unit composed of reserves and volunteers and contract players. I didn’t come up with the idea. Other departments have been using the same model for a few years and they’re clearing cases. It’s a good model. In fact, it was your work for San Fernando that made me think of it.”

“And so you want me on this…squad, or whatever you’re calling it. I can’t be a reserve. I wouldn’t pass the physical. Run a mile in under six minutes? Forget it.”

“Right, so you’d volunteer or we’d make a contract. I pulled all the murder books on the Gallagher case. Six books for four murders—more stuff than you took with you, I’m sure. You could go back to work—officially—on McShane.”

Bosch thought about that for a few moments. McShane had wiped out the whole Gallagher family in 2013 and buried them in the desert. But Bosch had never been able to prove it. And then he retired. He hadn’t solved every case he’d been assigned in almost 30 years working murders. No homicide detective ever did. But it was a whole family. It was the one case he hated most to leave on the table.

“You know I didn’t leave on good terms,” he said. “I walked out before they could throw me out. Then I sued them. They’ll never let me back in the door.”

“If you want it, it’s a done deal,” Ballard said. “I already cleared it before I came here. It’s a different captain now and different people. I have to be honest, Harry, not a lot of people there know about you. You been gone, what, five years? Six? It’s a different department.”

“They remember me up on ten, I bet.”

The tenth floor of the Police Administration Building was where the Office of the Chief of Police and most of the department’s commanders were located.

“Well, guess what, we don’t even work out of the PAB,” Ballard said. “We’re out in Westchester at the new homicide archive. Takes a lot of the politics and prying eyes out of it.”

That intrigued Bosch.

“Six books,” he said, musing out loud.

“Stacked on an empty desk with your name on it,” Ballard said.

Bosch had taken copies of many documents from the case with him when he retired. The chrono and all the reports he thought were most important. He had worked the case intermittently since his retirement but had to acknowledge he had gotten nowhere with it, and Finbar McShane was still out there somewhere and living free. Bosch had never found any solid evidence against him but he knew in his gut and in his soul that he was the one. He was guilty. Ballard’s offer was tempting.

“So I come back and work the Gallagher Family case?” he said.

“Well, you work it, yeah,” Ballard said. “But I need you to work other cases too.”

“There’s always a catch.”

“I need to show results. Show them how wrong they were to disband the unit. The Gallagher case is going to take some work—six books to review, no DNA or fingerprint evidence that is known. It’s a shoe-leather case, and I’m fine with that, but I need to clear some cases to justify the unit and keep it going so you can work a six-book case. Will that be a problem?”

Bosch didn’t answer at first. He thought about how a year earlier Ballard had pulled the rug out on him. She had quit the department in frustration with the politics and bureaucracy, the misogyny, everything, and they had agreed to make a partnership and go private together. Then she told him she was going back, lured by a promise from the chief of police to allow her to pick her spot. She chose the Robbery-Homicide Division downtown and that was the end of the planned partnership.

“You know, I had started looking for offices,” he said. “There was a nice two-room suite in a building behind the Hollywood Athletic Club.”

“Harry, look,” Ballard said. “I’ve apologized for how I handled that but you get part of the blame.”

“Me? That’s bullshit.”

“No, you were the one who first told me you can better effect change in an organization from the inside than from the outside. And that’s what I decided. So blame me if it makes you happy, but I actually did what you told me to do.”

Bosch shook his head. He didn’t remember telling her that but he knew it was what he felt. It was what he had told his daughter when she was considering joining the department in the wake of all the recent protests and cop hate.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “I’ll do it. 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?”

Bosch flashed for a moment on the pills he had lined up on the table a few minutes before.

“Whenever you want me to,” he said.

“Good,” Ballard said. “See you Monday, then. They’ll have a pass for you at the front desk and then we’ll get you an ID tag. They’ll have to take your photo and prints.”

“Is that desk near a window?”

Bosch smiled when he said it. Ballard didn’t.

“Don’t press your luck,” Ballard said.

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The idea behind the Bosch and Ballard relationship is to have one outsider and one insider working together, bouncing each’s unique skills and world view off of each other – sometimes to good results,
sometimes not.

I write fiction but I write in real world terms. As the days and years go by in real life, so too with my characters. In other words, they age in real time. They evolve as the world does. This is all well and good but then I got very, very lucky. Harry Bosch stuck around. The character stayed with me and seemed to stay with the readers as well. I wanted to write more, explore more about him and the feeling was that readers would come along for the ride. The only remote issue with that is that I started him off in 1992 at age forty-two and I have been stuck with that ever since. Harry ages and as he has aged it became increasingly clear that I was bending the reality – the verisimilitude – that I cherished. So, to steer back onto course, I at first had him retire and work private investigations and volunteer work for a small police department. That was all good. But the character persisted in my creative mind. I was not through with him. I still had to do something to lengthen my time with him.

Enter Renée Ballard. Much younger, thankfully, but with the same sense of mission as Harry Bosch. I introduced her in her own book, The Late Show, knowing full well that she was the one Bosch would
eventually pass the baton to. After that introduction came the meeting of the minds in Dark Sacred Night and the continuation in The Night Fire. They worked together – realistically, I hope – on cases and fed off
each other’s differences at the same time their shared mission in life kept them together. To me, these two books are about the passing of that baton. And in The Dark Hours we see Ballard move to the front. It is clearly her book. Bosch is there, of course, but he is a step back now. He, in a way, is support staff. He is the professor realizing his student knows the lesson. The parent pushing the baby out of the nest. All of
these things came to mind as I wrote this latest novel. Ballard still needs Bosch. Not to be the teacher but to be the one who understands their joint mission and to be there when the ‘darkness follows her’. And Bosch needs Ballard to stay relevant to himself and to help him complete the mission.
– Michael Connelly