When Renée Ballard’s police ID and badge are stolen while she’s out surfing, it’s just the start of a tsunami of complications that will affect her and her team at the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit. As she tries to pursue answers to that particular problem – with the help of Harry Bosch – and avoid departmental consequences, several other cases fight for attention. Advancements in familial DNA mean there’s a new lead in the case of an attacker known as the Pillowcase Killer, but the new genetic evidence seems to point to a high-ranking judge, so the way ahead seems treacherous. With the team mainly made up of volunteers, Renée jumps at the chance to include another actual serving officer, Maddie Bosch, who has her own reasons for joining the team. Though Renée is skeptical, Maddie thinks she has a new lead on one of Los Angeles’ most classic murder mysteries.
As Renée’s search for her badge leads to the discovery of plans for a horrendous crime, it also puts Harry in the crossfire and the team soon finds out that they might also be in danger from others who wish past crimes to remain unsolved…
*spoilers*
Over the past few years it does seem that while Connelly (and his many fans) will always hold Harry Bosch close to heart, there’s been something of a generational shift, making him almost a veteran supporting player – valued and vital to events and irascible as ever but perhaps more reactive than active. Renée Ballard has been slowly grabbing more and more of the spotlight in the novels. On television there’s a similar change. We will see the final season of the top-rated Bosch: Legacy on freevee(starring Titus Welliver) early in 2025 and a Ballard series (still technically untitled) starring Maggie Q debut later that year. For completists: The Lincoln Lawyer (with Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as legal wunderkind Mickey Haller) enters its third season later this month on Netflix. A proposed J. Edgar spin-off (featuring Jamie Hector reprising his role as Bosch’s ex-partner on an undercover mission in Miami) is now not going forward. Larry Andries (Blue Bloods) was due to write that show but is, ironically, currently facing serious off-screen felony charges of his own.
The Waiting of the latest novel’s title refers to the lengthy time it often takes to investigate a crime and solve it – sometimes days, sometimes weeks, maybe months, years and decades. Officers and families sometimes don’t get any real closure as time advances faster than technology and takes its toll. With the author often featuring the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit rather than the Robbery/Homicide days of old, that search for closure is often a long time coming and a foundational aspect of the stories.
One of the three main story arcs in the latest Connelly tome involves Ballard realising that someone has broken into her car while she was out surfing – the most serious implication being that items missing include her police ID card and badge. Knowing that she has people within the police force that would love to see her and her unit fail, she realises that immediately reporting the theft could lead to professional recriminations, but as her efforts to track where they might have ended up continues, the implications of her actions (and the intentions of those who now have them) grow more and more serious, involving not only her superiors but also the FBI. This is the arc that arguably brings the most ‘action’ to proceedings and it’s easy to imagine it transferring well to the screen.
The second, intertwined thread involves the use of DNA to track a killer over a multi-generational period and shows how the modern police-force can reach back to solve cases that might have remained open given the limitations of the time. It’s in this area that the members of Ballard’s team (mostly volunteers) bring in their own expertise and hopefully we’ll delve more deeply in to some of their backgrounds in future novels. Having recently reread some of Connelly’s late 1990/early 2000s outings, it’s also interesting to see how the use of technology as an important tool of policing has moved even within the lifetime of the books. Pagers and flip-phones are, like, totally, old-school now and have made way for smart-phones and widespread hi-tech accessorising.
Once again and not unexpectedly, Connelly delivers the goods, proving why he’s a master of his genre and a permanent tenant of the best-seller lists. Though I miss the days of one solid mystery being peeled away, the author’s creative pivot to interweave different investigations through each novel’s chapters has proven popular and successful, especially in an era where we get to see Connelly’s characters across page and screen. It’s clear that those subtle flourishes and choices are a two-way freeway…
With The Waiting, we technically get double the Bosch – with Harry proving an active part of one of the three main investigations, but with Harry’s daughter Maddie arguably more consistently central, bringing in a truly classic case for the team to help solve and clearly moving into a professional partnership with Ballard that looks to be solidified in one way or another in forthcoming stories.
Even those not familiar with the details of the classic case will likely recognise the infamous name of the Black Dahlia. The notorious murder, dating back to the sprawling LA of the late 1940s, left upcoming starlet Elizabeth Short not only dead but cut in two at the waist by her murderer. The person responsible has never been caught, though like the UK’s Jack the Ripper from seventy years previously, its gruesome details have achieved an almost mythic status and there were many theories as to who the culprit might have been. Connelly has always had an interest in true crime, dating back to his time as a journalist and which has subsequently included a number of projects not directly connected to his Bosch-verse novels. Although there are plenty of cultural references within the pages (and some sneaky self-reverential mentions of adjacent projects such as that Netflix version of The Lincoln Lawyer) this is arguably the first time that a real-life crime has played such a central pillar to fictional proceedings. The author has Maddie and Renée actively looking at some evidence that has been uncovered that might finally lead to some closure, though it also plays into Connelly’s somewhat cynical (but arguably accurate) observations about the way internal politics sometimes slow the cogs of actual justice when it comes to law enforcement and individual agendas.
Once again and not unexpectedly, Connelly delivers the goods, proving why he’s a master of his genre and a permanent tenant of the best-seller lists. Though I miss the days of one solid mystery being peeled away, the author’s creative pivot to interweave different investigations through each novel’s chapters has proven popular and successful, especially in an era where we get to see Connelly’s characters across page and screen. It’s clear that those subtle flourishes and choices are a two-way freeway.
As noted previously, it’s a good time to be a Connelly fan, both on screen and on the printed page. As always, Connelly’s thrillers are worth waiting for and The Waiting itself feels like a solid addition.
The Waiting is published – as a hardback, trade paperback, eBook and in audio – by Orion on 22nd October in the UK. (October 15 in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland).
- Story9
