Though Harry Bosch and Renée Ballard get equal billing above the title, this book really belongs to Detective Ballard, Bosch’s spiritual sister and fellow maverick. Whether this indicates the passing of the torch, or just a temporary shift of the spotlight, it feels like the right approach at the right place and time, which is Los Angeles at the turn of 2021. Between the pandemic, social unrest, and pervasive homelessness, the city is seething.
Still working the midnight shift in Hollywood, Ballard continues to chafe against the L.A.P.D.’s sexism, politics, and incompetence, but she loves the freedom afforded by the “late show.” In The Dark Hours, she switches back and forth between two cases: the murder of a well-liked auto-body-shop owner during a New Year’s Eve celebration, and an ongoing series of nocturnal rapes perpetrated by a tag team known as the Midnight Men. Though Ballard has no partner, she consults her retired guru, Bosch, who’s intrigued because the murder is linked to one of his old unsolved cases.
