The Night Fire is Michael Connelly’s third novel featuring LAPD detective Renée Ballard, and his second pairing Ballard with Harry Bosch. I like the pairing for many reasons. Ballard is a great character, as is Bosch. But Bosch is aging, so Connelly—who is my favorite murder mystery author—needs a new lead character. Thankfully, he’s got Ballard.

The novel begins with an arson-related death that Ballard is assigned on Hollywood Division’s “late shift.” It looks accidental, so she files a report and hands it off to day detectives. Bosch’s story begins when John Jack Thompson, his mentor as a young detective, dies and leaves him with a murder book that he had “stolen” from LAPD when he retired. The murder is a cold case from 1990. At the same time, Bosch helps his half-brother Mickey Haller question the guilt of an alleged a confessed murderer whom the police have dead to rights because of DNA, leaving open the question of who the “real killer” is. Ballard and Bosch co-work these cases, leading them into surprising discoveries…and danger.

The Night Fire is a slow burn. The danger part doesn’t really come in till the last 30 pages of the book. So, if you’re looking for explosive action, this isn’t your book. But as a police procedural—carefully following the evidence where it leads—this book kept me turning pages, which is my number-one criteria for whether I like a murder mystery.

Book Reviewed
Michael Connelly, The Night Fire: A Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2019).

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