The Night Fire A Ballard and Bosch Thriller
Reviewed By Ian Banks December 10, 2019
Author Michael Connelly
Distributor: Allen and Unwin
ISBN: 9781760876012
Publisher: Allen and Unwin
Release Date: October 2019
Website: https://www.allenandunwin.com
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After the funeral of an old friend John Jack Thompson, a man who was Bosch’s mentor when he was a rookie homicide cop, Harry Bosch, now recently retired, is asked to take care of a Murder Book kept by Thompson, when he left the department many years before. Bosch wonders why Thompson kept the Murder Book and what is in it that he expects Bosch to discover and finish. After all the murder of a young man who was dealing drugs was more than 20 years old!
And so, begins the latest in the gripping Harry Bosch series from Michael Connelly, with Bosch now mentoring Renee Ballard, an intelligent, first rate detective with that special fire in her belly for ensuring a case is closed, done properly and delivering answers.
What begins as a somewhat reluctant investigation into a case that was a very cold case, quickly begins to look very much like something else entirely, causing Bosch to rethink his feeling and beliefs of his mentor John Jack, and stretches both Ballard and Bosch’s expertise to new limits.
Ballard gets sent to a late-night arson case where a homeless man is burned to death. As the details of the case unfold, both Bosch and Ballard begin to suspect that perhaps this latest death has strong links to the past, links to the more than 20-year-old murder in John Jacks’ Murder Book. All Connelly’s novels consist of more than one crime scenario with The Night Fire being no exception.
Working tirelessly to discover what was behind the unsolved murder all those years ago, digging up secrets from the past, which eventually lead inside a crime syndicate that means business, and are happy to remove whatever is in their way, in order to get what they want, pushes both Bosch and Ballard into terrible danger.
Yet again they form a formidable team, that of the veteran cop whose seen it all and a ferociously intelligent young woman moving up into the darkly masculine world of crime investigation.
Well-constructed with the high standard of detail that has come to be an integral component of Connelly’s work, The Night Fire will enthral until the final word, which is as always not what would be expected, and leaves a thread dangling as a tempter for the next Ballard and Bosch novel.