The Dark Hours is a 2021 novel by Michael Connelly.
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 Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD 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 Ballard, who regards policing as a higher calling, is contemplating quitting.
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 is 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 Harry Bosch.
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 into women's homes and rape 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.
Tropes:
- Ambulance Chaser: 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.
- Cacophony Cover Up: The noise of the New Year celebration, and specifically the Firing in the Air a Lot tradition as the clock strikes midnight, is the moment where the killer shoots Javier Raffa.
- 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.
- Continuity Nod: Fewer than usual for a Connelly novel.
- Renee asks about "the radiation case" because she can't bring herself to say "leukemia". The radiation case was Harry handling stolen radioactive material in 2007's The Overlook, and in 2019 and The Night Fire Harry was diagnosed with leukemia. He tells her that he's managing it with medication.
- Renee remembers her platonic Meet Cute with Harry Bosch, when she caught him rifling through some files in the squad room. That was in Dark Sacred Night.
- Contrived Coincidence: 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.
- Cowboy Cop: 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.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: "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.
- Firing in the Air a Lot: The inner-city custom of firing guns into the air at midnight on New Year's is used by the killer to disguise his gunshot murdering Javier Raffa.
- 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.
- I Never Said It Was Poison:
- 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.
- Instant Drama, Just Add Tracheotomy: 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.
- Job Mindset Inertia: Ballard, maybe wondering why Harry Bosch is working a case with her when he is now in his 70s and hasn't had a law enforcement badge for three years, asks if he's ever considered "stopping." Bosch apparently can't handle the idea of being actually retired.Bosch: I guess when I stop, it all stops, you know?
- Killer Cop: 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.
- Meet Cute: Renee meets her new love interest, EMT Garrett Single, when he treats her after a suspect knocked her down some stairs and she banged her head on concrete.
- Mentor Archetype: 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".Ballard: I have known him for four or five years and he's sort of taken on a mentor's role with me.
- Mythology Gag: Renee spots an ad offering firearms lessons from a retired detective named Henrik Bastin. In Real Life Henrik Bastin was the main producer behind Bosch, the TV adaptation of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels that ended a seven-year run earlier in 2021.
- New Year Has Come: The book begins with Ballard and her partner getting called out to a New Year's block party that turned into a murder scene.
- No Name Given: As is usual in Michael Connelly books, the chief of police is not named, even when he appears onscreen like he does at the end of this novel, making a personal appeal to Ballard to come back to the force.
- Out of Focus: 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 back and forth, in this book Ballard has much more screen time and is the sole POV character for the book. Harry is a supporting character who helps Ballard with her investigation.
- Perfumigation: Ballard is happy to leave the sergeants' office after her talk with Sgt. Spellman, because "it was small and stuffy and smelled like whatever cologne Spellman was wearing."
- Real-Person Cameo: Dan Daly, a lawyer who helps Michael Connelly with research, makes one of his occasional appearances as a minor character. He represents Hoyle the dentist, implicated in the loansharking-and-murder plot.
- Shout-Out: Ballard compares Calvente the sleazy Ambulance Chaser lawyer to Paul Newman in The Verdict.
- Title Drop: Twice.
- After rape victim Bobbi Klein rejects Ballard's suggestion of therapy via Zoom call (this being January 2021), Ballard concludes that she "wasn't interested in hearing how a therapist on a computer screen could help her through the dark hours."
- 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."
- Two Lines, No Waiting: A common device in later Connelly novels. Ballard investigates two cases, the Midnight Men serial rapists and the New Year's murder, which have nothing to do with each other.
- Vanity Plate: 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."
- Woman Scorned: In the backstory. Why is Humberto Viera the Mexican Mafia crime boss serving a life sentence? Because of "LP-3", the confidential informant—Viera's old girlfriend. She ratted him out to the cops after finding out he was cheating on her.
