The Night Fire, by Michael Connelly

 The Book

    Harry Bosch goes to the funeral of his former training partner, John Jack Thompson. While comforting his widow, Margaret, she tells him she has something she will give only him. Bosch drops by the house after the funeral, bringing a cherry pie (an inside joke between Bosch and Thompson), and Margaret gives him a blue binder--a murder book.  Bosch takes it off her hands and begins to read. 

    Since Bosch recently got a knee replacement for the one he injured escaping a drug cartel, he knows he needs help to bring the victim, a young gay artist, any justice. He enlists the help of Renee Ballard, by leaving the murder book on her desk and switching her radio station from news to jazz. Ballard finds is after she comes back from a sad, but intriguing case involving a homeless man who died in a tent fire. She calls Bosch on his BS, and agrees to help him out. 

    As they work the case, Ballard finds ways to bend the rules. And the homeless man, wasn't just a sad case of addiction, he was a rich heir. And now it's murder. Ballard takes advantage of her old boss to bend a few rules, since he has less than a year left before retirement and doesn't want to make any waves. 

    Meanwhile, as if Bosch doesn't have enough work to do, he is trying to figure out who murdered a judge. He feels he must, because he figured out the man who was accused, a man his brother Mickey Haller is defending, is probably not guilty. And if that's not enough, we find out Bosch also has cancer. 

My Thoughts

    This book involves a little bit of everything. A wrongfully accused mentally ill defendant, mobsters, gang violence, homosexuality, drug use, and cancer. It's more overstuffed than an Agatha Christie novel or a Shonda Rhimes show. In Christie and Rhimes it tends to be a good thing, here, it's done extremely well, but I don't know if I am of the same opinion. Perhaps in Christie it's because the books are shorter that I care less it's overstuffed. It seems like, because the books are expected to be 100K words, Connelly keeps adding things to them. I like all three of the cases on their own, but...I would have dropped the gangbangers subplot from this series, and gone with just the judge's killing. Those two killings worked well together. It's masterfully plotted, and I don't know that Bosch and Ballard needed something more to tie them together. It seems over rationalized to me. 

    Ballard continues to show she is not adverse to bending the rules. Bosch, in the meantime, is slowing down, and he's showing a modicum of restraint. The character was, at the time of writing, 28 years into writing. That's a long time to live with a character, but I am glad to see Bosch settle a little bit. 

Now there are just 3 more Bosch books to read before I am caught up on the series. Whew, because I don't know if I can read very many more of them anyway. 

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

    This book entered my library on Dec 3, 2019. The cover of this book is moody and has a simplified, poetic cover. It was 405 pages long, although, as far as story goes, it may be significanly fewer pages, since this book alternates between Bosch and Ballard every few chapters. This is a first edition, lightly read, and easy to hold. The book was at the time of purchase, $29.00, 

This Book                            $29.00

This Summer                     $587.85       

    

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