#BlogTour ‘The Dark Hours’ by Michael Connelly

About the book…

Has a killer lain dormant for years only to strike again on New Year’s Eve?

LAPD Detective Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch team up to find justice for an innocent victim in the new thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly

There’s chaos in Hollywood on New Year’s Eve. Working her graveyard shift, LAPD Detective Renée Ballard seeks shelter at the end of the countdown to wait out the traditional rain of lead as hundreds of revelers shoot their guns into the air. As reports start to roll in of shattered windshields and other damage, Ballard is called to a scene where a hardworking auto shop owner has been fatally hit by a bullet in the middle of a crowded street party.

It doesn’t take long for Ballard to determine that the deadly bullet could not have fallen from the sky. Ballard’s investigation leads her to look into another unsolved murder—a case at one time worked by Detective Harry Bosch.

Ballard and Bosch team up once again to find out where the old and new cases intersect. All the while they must look over their shoulders. The killer who has stayed undetected for so long knows they are coming after him

Published by Little,Brown in hardcover and e-book formats on November the 9th, I am grateful to both them and blog tour organiser, Tracy Fenton , for the invite and paperback review copy of ‘The Dark Hours’

How I *adore* technology-with one button you can connect with someone on the other side of the world, yet trying to get a simple book review to save, and then upload, seems to be asking a bit much of the internet gods these days!

Anyway, enough of that moaning, let’s try and get something out worth saying on publication day of all days!

Happy book birthday Harry Bosch!

What makes this Harry Bosch novel a must read?

Well apart from the fact that Harry Bosch is in it, he gets to walk the beat with another fabulous Connelly creation, Renee Ballard. A seasoned detective with killer instincts and a ferocious personality, she and Harry are pulled into an investigation which suggests a serial killer is on the loose, at possibly the worst time of year to be looking for one.

New Year’s Eve is a huge holiday, as well as being a perfect time to hide in plain sight-it has cultural significance as well to those who take justice seriously, and who want to end a killer year -no pun intended-with as full a slate of captured bad guys as possible.

The previously introduced concepts of the creeping awareness of the current pandemic have been skilfully dealt with and are contextualised perfectly. He-Connelly-doesn’t dive into the subject lightly, the effects on policing, the process of being a private, or public detective are not used as plot points hammered home to the reader.

Instead, with his usual aplomb, Connelly strides forward into the very strange reality in which we find ourselves, armed with a strong moral compass and 2 protagonists who know how to use it.

Following his last novel, the Mickey Haller/Harry Bosch double handler ‘The Law Of Innocence’, he teams Harry up with no nonsense Renee, unafraid to dig around in the dirt and expose the roots she finds there, no matter what they were holding up. Pulling structures down around her ears and getting on the wrong side of the top brass is nothing new to Ballard, but in the context of a pandemic, rising gang violence and the ever present awareness of what the public perception of law givers currently are, both she and Bosch have their work cut out for them.

And you, the reader, are more than happy to ride shotgun.

The reality, the dust and heat rises off the page, you can smell the oppressive atmosphere and taste the fear in between the lines of this book which contains  spot-on social commentary, without ever treading into polemic, whilst delivering a flawless and gripping police procedural novel. The strength of characters such as these ,who are now firmly entrenched in the cultural arena of investigative fiction, could overwhelm any story they are put in, and, at this stage in the correlating series, it would be so easy to just churn out a yearly novel with a built in audience ready to snap it up.

As usual, Connelly delivers, and does not let you down.

The only problem I have is when I read a new joint adventure, as it were, is that I want to go back to the beginning and read the stand alone, and cross series books again.

And if that is a problem, then I consider myself a very fortunate reader indeed!

About the author….

Having sold – to date – more than seventy-four million copies of his novels worldwide, Philadelphia-born author Michael Connelly is one of the most successful crime writers working today. A lifelong fan of Raymond Chandler, Connelly worked as a journalist, co-authoring a magazine story that was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize.

His first novel, The Black Echo, won the prominent Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992 and launched the phenomenally popular Harry Bosch series. He is also the author of the Mickey Haller series as well as several stand-alone novels and other mini-series. His novels ‘‘Blood Work’ and ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ have both been successfully adapted for screen.

Links-https://www.michaelconnelly.com/

          https://www.compulsivereaders.com/

Twitter @Connellybooks @orionbooks @Tr4cyF3n0n