"Desert Star" feels like a swan song for detective Harry Bosch, the protagonist of 25 Michael Connelly novels (depending on how you count them). But, since every book concludes with Bosch quitting the LAPD or abandoning his subsequent private practice or annoying some criminal or legal kingpin, the crabby detective has seemingly been in mid-swan song ever since he was a cygnet.
True to form, Bosch is supposedly retired as "Desert Star" opens but occasional collaborator Renée Ballard — Connelly's prime character, now on her fifth outing — lures him out of retirement with the promise of work on a cold-case unit that will let him focus on the ones that got away, judicially speaking. So, Bosch is back on the force for the length of a book, anyway.
Connelly has juiced the pace of his breakneck thrillers lately, often doubling up on the crimes, so we get Harry roughing up suspects in the long-ago murder of an entire family as well as a more recent killing, whose young female victim was the sister of his and Ballard's new boss.
Both cases are absorbing and Ballard's outings with Bosch have made her a sharper (and crankier) character. Best of all, Bosch gains intriguing depth as he faces down death, unsure of the legacy he's leaving his daughter, also now a cop, or the corpse-strewn streets of Los Angeles.
Chris Hewitt is a Star Tribune features writer and critic.
Desert Star
By: Michael Connelly.
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 400 pages, $29.
LOCAL FICTION: Featuring stories within stories, she’ll discuss the book at Talking Volumes on Tuesday.
