History Literature / TheDarkHours

The action starts in the last moments of 2020, as Detective Renee Ballard and her temporary partner Lisa Moore sit in a squad car, waiting to police revelers who are about to indulge in the LA tradition of firing guns in the air at midnight. It has been a bad year for the world, the city, and the LAPD. The Los Angeles Police Department is in a defensive crouch after COVID-19 and the George Floyd protests, with officers being reactive instead of proactive. Morale is at an all-time low. Even Detective Ballard, who regards policing as a higher calling, is contemplating quitting.

The action starts in the last moments of 2020, as Detective Renee Ballard and her temporary partner Lisa Moore sit in a squad car, waiting to police revelers who are about to indulge in the L.A. tradition of firing guns in the air at midnight. It has been a bad year for the world, the city, and the LAPD. The Los Angeles Police Department is in a defensive crouch after COVID-19 and the George Floyd protests, "the pose of a citizen caught in the middle of a bank robbery," with officers being reactive instead of proactive. Morale is at an all-time low. Even Detective Ballard, who regards policing as a higher calling, is contemplating quitting.

Meanwhile, Ballard has a second case: the "Midnight Men". That's the nickname Renee has given to a tag-team pair of rapists who burst in to women's homes and raped them on both the night before Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Renee is still investigating the murder of Javier Raffa when she finds out that, sure enough, the Midnight Men struck again for New Year's.

* AmbulanceChaser: A disgusted Bosch uses these exact words to describe Calvente, the sleazy lawyer who goes to Javier Raffa's funeral, despite barely knowing him, in an effort to drum up some business.

* {{Cliffhanger}}: The first true cliffhanger of any Michael Connelly novel ever. Renee has quit the LAPD and gone home, when none other than the chief of police himself shows up at her door and asks her to come back, and help him fix the department. The book ends before Renee gives him an answer.

* ContrivedCoincidence: Los Angeles is a big city with many many detectives, but naturally Harry Bosch was the investigating officer on the old cold case that turns out to be connected by ballistics to the Javier Raffa murder.
* CowboyCop: Ballard as usual, doing stuff like bringing in elderly civilian Harry Bosch as her partner, or hiding Bonner's burner phone at a crime scene so she can investigate it herself. But she may reach peak cowboy cop at the end, when she arranges for a trap of the Midnight Men rapists ''while she is on suspension'' and won't have any backup.
* DramaticGunCock: "Ballard thumbed back the hammer on the gun" to get one of the Midnight Men rapists to do what he's told, after she's got him on the ground.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: In the very first chapter Ballard, worn down by the futility of police work, contemplates quitting. Near the end she does just that, although she might change her mind.

** Ballard is pressing Davenport to connect her with his old confidential informant, known only by file designation LP-3. She asks again and Davenport says "What do you think you'll get out of her?," only for Ballard to shoot back "So it's a woman?". (It is.)
** Ballard becomes suspicious when rape victim Cindy Carpenter says her ex-husband called her and asked about "some guys" who broke in. Ballard didn't tell Reggie Carpenter that more than one man broke into Cindy's house.
* InstantDramaJustAddTracheotomy: After realizing that her punch crushed Bonner's windpipe, Ballard calls her friend Garrett the EMT in a blind panic and has him guide her through an emergency tracheotomy, which is done realistically, with Renee having to use a knife to make the incision. Then, after Bonner regains consciousness and realizes that it's all over for him, he rips the plastic tube she used out of his throat, and dies.

* KillerCop: The shooter is one Christopher Bonner, a former LAPD cop who was still on the force back when he killed Albert Lee, Harry Bosch's victim, back in 2011.

* MentorArchetype: Harry Bosch, too old to be a cop himself anymore, who has more or less taken Ballard under his wing as an unofficial partner, and is teaching her the ways of the true detective (and how to be a Michael Connelly hero). She thinks of him as her "homicide guru".

** When Ballard says that Bosch can get some sleep while they're on stakeout because she's used to being awake at night, he says "The dark hours belong to you."

* VanityPlate: Jason Abbott, the asshole dentist who it turns out is behind the murder plots, drives a Tesla with a vanity plate that says "2th DOC."

* KillerCop: The shooter is one Christopher Bonner, a former LAPD cop who was still on the force back when he killed Albert Lee, Harry Bosch's victim, back in 2011.

Shortly after midnight Ballard and Moore get a surprising call. It seems that at one particular block party in a Latino neighborhood, one bullet was not fired up in the air: instead, it was fired into the skull of Javier Raffa, owner of an auto-body shop. Since she's on the "late show" (overnight detective squad), Renee should hand over the case to West Bureau in the morning, but West Bureau is busy with another homicide and, as her wont, Ballard manages to keep the case. An analysis of the shell casings soon brings up a link to a cold case, one in which the investigating officer was none other than Ballard's friend and mentor, retired LAPD detective Literature/HarryBosch.

* {{Cliffhanger}}: The first true cliffhanger of any Michael Connelly ever. Renee has quit the LAPD and gone home, when none other than the chief of police himself shows up at her door and asks her to come back, and help him fix the department. The book ends before Renee gives him an answer.

* NewYearHasCome: The book ends with Ballard and her partner getting called out to a New Year's block party that turned into a murder scene.

* OutOfFocus: The transition from Harry Bosch to Renee Ballard as cop protagonists seems to be largely complete by this novel. This is the third book in which Harry and Renee both appear as characters, and while the previous two gave equal time to both characters and switched POV throughout, in this book Ballard has much more screen time and POV through the entire book. Harry is a supporting character who helps Ballard with her investigation.

* RealPersonCameo: Dan Daly, a lawyer who helps Michael Connelly with research, makes one of his occassional appearances as a character. He represents Hoyle the dentist, implicated in the loansharking-and-murder plot.

* FiringInTheAirALot: The inner-city custom of firing guns into the air at midnight is used by the killer to disguise his gunshot murdering Javier Raffa.