The Night Fire - Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly is well known for the way he has the main characters from his series  appear in each other’s books – even to the point where fans are not always sure how to classify a particular novel within the author’s bibliography. The Night Fire, for instance, is a “threefer” that combines the leads from all three of Connelly’s main series: Renée Ballard, Harry Bosch, and Mickey Haller. Past experience indicates that the Ballard/Bosch books get counted in both series, but that the Haller books don’t always get numbered that way. So this one will probably become known as Renée Ballard #3 and Harry Bosch #22, with only an honorable mention going to Mickey Haller who gets fewer pages in this one than the other two characters get. The Haller series, in fact, numbers only five books to this point although that character has also appeared in four Bosch books. To be fair, Bosch is limited to the same honorable mention in two of the five Haller books.

 

I make you suffer through all of this number-crunching because I’m starting to believe that Harry Bosch’s days as a main fictional character may be numbered (pun intended). Now retired from the LAPD and approaching seventy years of age, Harry is not capable of doing some of the things he did in the past. The only badge he carries nowadays is the reserve deputy badge of a small police department near Los Angeles, and he only has even that one because he may be needed to testify in a couple of cases that are still open in that jurisdiction. Bosch keeps his hand in the game mainly by working under the radar with LAPD Detective Ballard, who has agreed to partner up with him on cold cases that catch their interest, or by helping his half-brother Mickey Haller work up legal defenses for clients. Spoiler Alert: And now, Connelly throws a new (and unresolved)  complication into Bosch’s life that may just further lessen his effectiveness as a street detective. Frankly, it’s starting to look like Ballard is being eased into her series just as Bosch may be approaching the end of his. (I hope I’m wrong about this, believe me.)

 

Michael Connelly

As The Night Fire opens, Bosch is attending the graveside service of his old LAPD mentor John Jack Thompson, the man largely responsible for shaping rookie Bosch into the cop he would ultimately become. Later, Thompson’s widow gives Bosch an old case file that her husband walked away with when he retired twenty years earlier. Bosch, after reviewing the file for himself, and still unable to figure out why John Jack was so interested in it, convinces Ballard, unbeknownst to her LAPD bosses, to work the cold case with him. But when it becomes obvious to both of them that John Jack Thompson added nothing new to the file during the entire twenty years it was in possession, Bosch wonders whether his old friend was more interested in making sure the case was forgotten about than he was in solving it.

 

Bottom Line: The Night Fire is another excellent, character-driven police procedural from Michael Connelly. Ballard, who has had her ups and downs with her immediate superiors in the past, is now politically savvy enough to simultaneously investigate a cold case with Bosch and another very different case on her own while keeping both of them from the wrath of vengeful LAPD detectives who would love nothing more than to get even with both of them. Bosch is getting older, and he’s starting to feel it every day. He’s closer now to being a desktop consultant than he is to being a street cop, and he knows it. Where the Renée Ballard/Harry Bosch partnership goes from here will be very interesting to see, and I can’t wait for Ballard #4/Bosch #24 to find out what happens next. (Bosch #23 is a collaboration with Mickey Haller scheduled for publication later this year). There are those numbers again.