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A review by cgcang
The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly
5.0
Okay, this one confirmed for me that Connelly is the grandmaster of police procedurals and no one does it better than him.
I think I like this one more than both Dark Sacred Night and The Night Fire, probably because it's primarily a Ballard novel, not a Ballard and Bosch novel as advertised, I mean... Bosch was much more prominent in The Reversal and it wasn't even called a Haller and Bosch novel, it was just a Haller book. And the reason I like this one more than the last two isn't that I like Ballard more than Bosch in any way. It's just that both DSN and TNF were more or less cut in half and shared between Ballard and Bosch, making them not complete Ballard and Bosch novels but a mishmash of two half novels. So when I say The Dark Hours is a Ballard novel, I mean it feels like a complete novel, not shared between two important characters who both need their own space and effort. Therefore it feels more natural, more developed, in a way a like direct follow up to The Late Show, because once again it's completely Ballard's show. She has the space to herself now that there isn't a lot of Bosch and it really works.
In turn, there is very little of Bosch and I'm not really okay with that. I really want to see a solo Bosch novel, or at least Connelly can do for Bosch what he did for Ballard here and make her some kind of supporting character at least for one more book. Because Bosch is getting really old and I don't want him to just leave everything to Ballard and completely retire or possibly die of old age. We deserve a solo Bosch book, even if it's going to be the last one we ever get.
I think I like this one more than both Dark Sacred Night and The Night Fire, probably because it's primarily a Ballard novel, not a Ballard and Bosch novel as advertised, I mean... Bosch was much more prominent in The Reversal and it wasn't even called a Haller and Bosch novel, it was just a Haller book. And the reason I like this one more than the last two isn't that I like Ballard more than Bosch in any way. It's just that both DSN and TNF were more or less cut in half and shared between Ballard and Bosch, making them not complete Ballard and Bosch novels but a mishmash of two half novels. So when I say The Dark Hours is a Ballard novel, I mean it feels like a complete novel, not shared between two important characters who both need their own space and effort. Therefore it feels more natural, more developed, in a way a like direct follow up to The Late Show, because once again it's completely Ballard's show. She has the space to herself now that there isn't a lot of Bosch and it really works.
In turn, there is very little of Bosch and I'm not really okay with that. I really want to see a solo Bosch novel, or at least Connelly can do for Bosch what he did for Ballard here and make her some kind of supporting character at least for one more book. Because Bosch is getting really old and I don't want him to just leave everything to Ballard and completely retire or possibly die of old age. We deserve a solo Bosch book, even if it's going to be the last one we ever get.