This week’s New Title Tuesday recommendation, The Late Show will not disappoint fans of Bosch and Lincoln Lawyer author Michael Connelly. This time, the detective is an uncompromising female.
Publisher’s Summary: Renee Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood–also known as the Late Show–beginning many investigations but finishing none, as each morning she turns everything over to the day shift. A once up-and-coming detective, she’s been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night she catches two assignments she doesn’t want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn. Against orders and her partner’s wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night.
It’s easy to get hooked on The Late Show because of the brisk pace and the immersion into Hollywood’s seedier side. It’s not surprising that Renee Ballard is such a believable character.
Connelly told Goodreads, “I have a cadre of friends who are real homicide detectives in the LAPD who help me with my books, and one of them is a woman named Mitzi Roberts, who had spent time on the midnight shift at Hollywood Station earlier in her career and has been telling me stories about it over the last few years. I like the variety that the night shift had, so I’ve been asking her a lot of questions about it and gathering stories for a few years, and it just kind of all came together that now was the time to do it.”
It’s difficult not to respect Detective Ballard. “Smart and fierce, she never stops working…. She’s also steamy enough to weaponize seduction if it will help her, and absolutely blunt when she speaks her mind. When a colleague who betrayed her tries to apologize, she responds with an unforgiving tongue-lashing,” wrote Janet Maslin for the New York Times.
The Late Show is a non-stop, fasten-your-seatbelts, thrill ride that will keep you guessing until the end.
Happy Reading, Susan C.
Also by Connelly:
The Black Echo – The very first Harry Bosch novel, winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, is available once more. A body discovered in a drainpipe on Mulholland Drive turns out to be a fellow Vietnam “tunnel rat” who had fought by the side of the maverick LAPD homicide detective. Now Bosch is about to relive the horror of ‘Nam while on the hunt for a killer whose true face will shock him.
The Wrong Side of Goodbye – Harry Bosch is California’s newest private investigator. He doesn’t advertise, he doesn’t have an office, and he’s picky about who he works for. Soon one of Southern California’s biggest moguls comes calling. The reclusive billionaire is nearing the end of his life and is haunted by one regret. When he was young, he had a relationship with a Mexican girl. But soon after becoming pregnant, she disappeared. Desperate to know whether he has an heir, the dying magnate hires Bosch, the only person he can trust. With such a vast fortune at stake, Harry realizes that his mission could be risky not only for himself but for the one he’s seeking. But as he begins to uncover the haunting story–and finds uncanny links to his own past–he knows he cannot rest until he finds the truth.
The O'Fallon Public Library News 