Audiobook Review: The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly

The Dark Hours
by Michael Connelly, narrated by Christine Lakin and Titus Welliver (Compact Disc Connelly)

This is the fourth entry in Connelly’s Renee Ballard series, but it is also the 23rd entry in his Harry Bosch series. Unlike the previous volume, The Night Fire (2019), in which Renee and Harry took turns narrating the story, in The Dark Hours, Renee is the only point-of-view character. However, since this is an audiobook, in addition to Christine Lakin as the primary narrator, they did bring back Titus Welliver (the actor portraying Bosch in the recently-concluded Amazon Prime streaming series Bosch) to provide the voice of Harry Bosch any time his character speaks.

 

The Dark Hours follows Renee’s work on two simultaneous cases — first, she is reluctantly partnered up with a fellow female detective on the “Midnight Men” case — a pair of men working together to commit serial rape crimes against specifically targeted single women. And then, when a hispanic man, a former gang member who got out of that life, is killed by a gunshot during the chaos of midnight gunfire citywide as Angelinos go into the streets to fire their guns in the air at the toll of midnight on December 31st, 2020, Renee intuits that the death was not accidental but instead an intentional murder. Ballistics matches the gun used in the New Years Eve killing to an old, unsolved case from Bosch’s era — the retired detective and the young late shift detective combine notes and efforts to research that case. Meanwhile, Renee also follows a few promising leads on identifying a pattern to the tag-team rapists to try to predict their next move and prevent another woman from being victimized — while dealing with a burned-out colleague and lack of support from her supervisors.

 

Connelly is superb at creating realistic police procedurals, with compelling characters and tense plots. Renee Ballard has been a fascinating character to see evolve in her first four books, and her “unofficial” partnership with the older, retired Bosch as a mentor figure has been an interesting way for Connelly to keep his most-renowned character still active in recent years. I definitely appreciated the fact that in this book, we get to see how the L.A.P.D. is coping during the pandemic years — the bulk of the events take place in the first two weeks of January 2021, as even first responders in Los Angeles are mostly still awaiting COVID-19 vaccinations. With most contemporary series writers casting a blind eye towards the pandemic, it has been refreshing to see Connelly integrate the true reality of our world into his storytelling.

 

The Dark Hours is another superb Connelly title — he rarely disappoints!

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the first three Renee Ballard novels by Connelly, particularly in audiobook format, all read by Christine Lakin and Titus Welliver.)

 

( official The Dark Hours page on the official Michael Connelly web site )

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

 

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