SIDEBAR Winter 2019-2020 - 11

MONTGOMERYBAR.ORG

BOOK REVIEW:

The Night Fire
by Michael Connelly
Review By Jules J. Mermelstein, Esq.

F

ans of Michael Connelly's
characters Harry Bosch (also
a television series "Bosch" on
Amazon Prime Video) and Mickey
Haller, a/k/a "The Lincoln Lawyer," will
be thrilled that both return in this latest
novel by Mr. Connelly, The Night Fire.
Retired Detective Bosch's mentor and
first partner as a police officer dies. His
widow finds a murder book belonging to
the police department in her husband's
desk and gives it to Harry to return to
the department. The murder book is
of a cold case from 1990 and Harry
assumes that the reason his mentor
"stole" the book from the department
was to continue working the case in his
retirement. Instead of just returning it to
the cold case department, Harry turns
it over to Detective Renee Ballard, a
friend who has agreed to work cases with
Harry in his retirement. Detective Ballard
works the night shift in Hollywood and

comes across interesting cases of her own
throughout the book, including one that
appears to be an accidental fire killing a
homeless person and an apparent suicide
of an eleven-year-old girl. Ballard doubts
the initial determinations by the police
and continues investigating.
Meanwhile, Bosch decides something
did not seem right in the testimony
of prosecution witnesses during a case
his half-brother, Mickey Haller, was
defending. That case involved the murder
of a judge whose body was found with
the DNA of Haller's court-appointed
client under the fingernails of the judge.
Bosch does his own investigation into
this, which Detective Ballard questions,
because she considers helping a defense
attorney to be the "dark side." However,
her respect for Bosch lets her withhold
judgment.
Michael Connelly is a master of his
craft. This reviewer is about to publish

his first novel and wishes his writing skills
were as good. To quote a review by Jeff
Ayers distributed by the Associated Press:
Connelly is the Raymond Chandler
of this generation, and readers will be
studying his writing methods decades from
now.
He has created another novel that
feels authentic on every level, and the
underlying theme of mortality running
through the narrative makes everything in
the story more urgent.
As you have probably determined
already, this reviewer highly recommends
this book to anyone who enjoys legal
fiction, and especially to those who like
the characters of Bosch and Haller. It was
published by Little, Brown and is 417
pages long.

WINTER 2019-2020 11


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