The Washington Times
published my review of Michael Connelly’s The Late Show.
Crime novelist Michael
Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch crime series, offers a new character with
Los Angeles Police Detective Renee Ballard in his latest and 30th novel “The
Late Show.”
Consigned to the midnight
shift in Hollywood — called the “late show” by the cops — as an unofficial
punishment after she filed a sexual harassment complaint against her
supervisor, Lt. Robert Olivas, Detective Ballard remains a sharp, feisty and
dedicated investigator, but she’s stuck performing limited, unsatisfactory work
for a once up-and-coming detective and a go-getter who likes to see things
through.
As the novel begins the
32-year-old detective deals with a couple of cases that she liked to, needed
to, see through to completion and insure that justice is done. But the first
problem is her partner on the midnight shift, Detective Jenkins, who is happy
with his night job, even volunteered for it, as he had a sick wife at home and
he wanted to be home when she woke up in the morning.
“It was their main point of contention in
their partnership. They worked the midnight shift, the late show, moving from
case to case, called to any scene where a detective was needed to take initial
reports or sign off on suicides. But they kept no cases,” Mr. Connelly writes.
“They wrote up the initial reports and turned the cases over to the appropriate
investigative units in the morning. Robbery, sexual assault, burglary, auto
theft, and so on down the line. Sometimes Ballard wanted to work a case from
beginning to end. But that wasn’t the job and Jenkins was never inclined to
stray one inch from its definition.”
… Like his Bosch crime
novels, the Renee Ballard story is a realistic and largely accurate portrayal
of cops working crime, and crime working cops. The novel reminds me somewhat of
former LAPD Sgt. Joseph Wambaugh’s classic cop novels.
You can read the rest of the review via the below link:
