LAPD detective Renée Ballard is drawn to the dark streets of L.A. and prepares herself for anything to happen. She knows on New Year’s Eve bullets will fly in “celebration” of the upcoming year. A killer using the gunfire as a distracting cover murders an auto shop owner. This case piles on to Ballard’s current workload to solve multiple rapes of women by who the press calls The Midnight Men. There seems to be no real connection on female victims The Midnight Men select which stumps Ballard but she keeps digging. This is more of a police procedural than a thriller and the story slows with cop jargon and procedures. Ballard, although carrying much baggage, is a sympathetic character and sometimes seems superhuman by going without sleep for over 24 hours. Connelly brings back an aging Harry Bosch who has become Ballard’s trusted mentor and together they put puzzle pieces together in a great climatic scene with Ballard purposely putting herself in immediate danger.

Ballard and Bosch team up again in this stellar entry in the series. It's tradition that at midnight on New Year's Eve in Hollywood, people point their guns at the sky and shoot. Ballard is on the nightshift and is called to the scene of a shooting at an auto repair shop. The owner of the shop has been murdered, and not by one of the bullets shot into the sky. Ballard's investigation leads to a cold case once worked by Harry Bosch. They team up to solve this new killing, and possibly the old one. This is Connelly at his best.

The Dark Hours, by Michael Connelly, adds another fantastic book to his catalog and enforces his hold near the top of police procedures. He doesn't have a monopoly on the genre but I'm not sure there is anyone better.

Featuring LAPD detective Renée Ballard, The Dark Hours hits all the right notes. Ballard is a great detective but kind of a renegade within the LAPD. Not only does she have to contend with criminals she must also deal with opposition elements within the department. Seemingly, the only person she can rely on is Ret. Detective Harry Bosch. As allies go, you can't have a better one than Bosch.

The Dark Hours features some heinous criminals with well thought-out schemes. The criminals he invents are both diabolical and ingenious. Actually, every character he creates are well developed with many layers. Connelly is a true master of his craft.

Whether you are new to his books or a long-time fan, Connelly never disappoints.

My sincere thanks to Michael Connelly, Little, Brown and Company, and NetGalley for the privilege of reviewing The Dark Hours.

New Year's Eve is never a good time to pull duty. Detective Ballard, a member of the Hollywood police unit, has been working the midnight shift for a number of months. Everyone is happy she is on the night shift.

Her boss does not like her. His objective is to have her investigate and solve the crimes and then have them turned over to the day unit so he can take the credit. Ballard’s partner wants to have New Year's Eve off and does not show for her watch.

A group of thugs called “The Midnight Men” were committing brutal rapes in Ballard’s territory. She is tasked with investigating the case but is also forewarned that the case will more than likely be turned over to the day watch fairly quickly. The ugly job of interviewing the victims is given to her.

Victims of crime are forced to relive the crime to help in solving them. This makes Ballard a very unpopular detective. Similarities in the way the crimes evolve lead to a very identifiable pattern. But finding out the sequence of events leaves the detective on the low end of the popularity scale.

True to his understanding of the craft, Michael Connelly develops a very plausible sequence of events and the story becomes more gripping as time goes on. The clues in the book make the attempt to solve the crime satisfying. This novel certainly will not disappoint. 4.5 stars – CE Williams

Another great installment with Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch with a great story li e starting off on New Year's eve in Los Angeles. The action never lets up which is the trademark of this pair. I look forward to the next book featuring them or another series from this excellent author.

Wonderful Bosch/Ballard pairing in 2 very different and difficult cases. I’ve been reading Bosch since the beginning and was so surprised at how he’d aged (but so have I). The action is intense and Bosch is always the guiding voice of experience
Thank you netgalley and the publisher for this arc

Dark Hours by Michael Connelly is an absorbing mystery with fully realized characters. This is part of a series, but is a good entry point for those who haven't read the Harry Bosch series or this newer series with LAPD detective Renee Ballard and now retired LAPD detective Harry Bosch.

This is a thrilling police procedural that follows Renee Ballard as she investigates two cases in the midst of the pandemic. One case is a murder of a former gang member that she discovers has ties to a cold case of retired detective Harry Bosch. The other involves serial rapists and the dark web. Michael Connelly skillfully incorporates the realities of the pandemic, the protests, and the struggles of police forces facing defunding, demoralization and the ever-present fear of covid with no vaccine yet available. Renee seeks Harry out for advice and assistance during her two investigations, but the final resolutions are hers, with Harry as her mentor and back-up. The book is suspenseful, complex, and topical. It kept me completely immersed in the dual plots. I thoroughly enjoyed the book! Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my complimentary copy!

The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly is a novel featuring Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch as an unlikely pair trying to solve two crimes. One, a murder that takes place on New Years Eve and the other is finding two men who are attacking women in their homes. Renee is determined to solve both cases, and encourages Harry to help her. Harry has become a recluse since his departure from the LAPD, but when he is contacted by Renee he becomes a much needed back-up as well as a great resource for the overly worked Renee. When she calls, she knows Harry is the person who will show up no matter what. Together, they lead this fast paced story to an action packed ending you won’t want to miss. I think Renee and Harry make one of the greatest teams in crime novels today. Thank You to Net Galley, the Author Michael Connelly and the Publisher Little, Brown and Company for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this great novel for an honest review. Don’t Miss this one!

I have enjoyed all of Michael Connelly's books. The Harry Bosch series is my favorite but I really like the Renee Ballard series as well. Having both characters in one book is a reader's dream come true. Great characters and a fast moving plot, makes for a great police procedural novel. Highly recommended

Renee Ballard works the night shift. On New Year’s Eve she picks up a case. A man is shot at midnight during a party where folks are shooting into the air to celebrate New Years. She quickly figures out that the man wasn't hit by a random bullet shot in the air, and the accident becomes a murder. She finds a bullet casing under a car, and it belongs to the same gun used in an unsolved case many years ago. Although the case book was missing, Ballard finds out that Harry Bosch had worked on worked on it. Ballard goes to talk with Bosch, and he agrees to help her.

And then, the next day she picks up the case of a woman attacked in her home and viciously raped by two men who invaded her home the previous night to work with a woman in the Hollywood Sex Crimes unit on the second case, and her partner takes off for a vacation leaving her to do the work.

You know this is a new book, because they all have masks! However, Ballard has developed as a great character, smart and hard working. Both cases are difficult, but Ballard and Bosch win in the end. With the aid of Harry Bosch, she solves both cases.

“The Dark Hours” (A Renee Ballard & Harry Bosch Novel)
by Michael Connelly

Serial Rapists and Hitmen Further Terrorize Covid-scared LA

With LA crime on the rise, and police staffing levels throughout the city down due to both budget cuts and Covid-19 concerns, Detective Renee Ballard works around-the-clock trying to solve two major cases—one with a brutal tag-team of serial rapists terrorizing the community and another of murders-for-hire.

A lone-wolf, who prefers working the dark hours of graveyard shift, Ballard is tenacious, determined and hardworking when it comes to solving her cases.

She doesn't mind missing sleep during her off-time for digging-up facts; knocking-on doors; talking to potential witnesses; and thinking outside-of-the-box with anyone that may be helpful—unlike many of her peers who seem happy to coast in their jobs—doing the least to get by.

Although Ballard gets results, she also walks a fine line between what's exactly approved by her bosses—like consulting on cases with brilliant former Detective Harry Bosch—who didn't leave the Force with the best reputation.

In “The Dark Hours,” Michael Connelly delivers again. The master of the crime thriller, Connelly, doesn't fail us in this Ballard and Bosch mystery of the highest order. It's a fresh storyline that's fast-paced in a gripping page-turner. Like every Connelly, I couldn't put it down. It was a one sitting; one day read that I thoroughly enjoyed. Bosch is back and as cool as ever! His protégé, Ballard, is pretty slick herself. What a crime solving duo!

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The Book Maven’s Journal—Reviews for Word Connoisseurs

REVIEWER: J.Hunt
STAR RATING ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“The Dark Hours” Author: Michael Connelly Genre: Adult Fiction | Mysteries & Thrillers | Publication Date: 09 November 2021 Publishers: Little, Brown and Company

With Sincerest Appreciation to NetGalley, Author Michael Connelly, and Publishers Little, Brown and Company for this Advance Reader’s Copy for Review.

The Dark Hours is the fourth book in the Renée Ballard series by Michael Connelly, best-selling crime fiction author of thirty-six novels, most notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. I’ve read and enjoyed all of Connelly’s novels. Like many Connelly fans, the Bosch books remain my favorites, but Connelly is another author who never writes a bad book. So, I give all his novels high marks. He always delivers intriguing thrillers with complex and often-flawed characters. While I enjoyed the previous three Ballard books, The Dark Hours is certainly my favorite so far. I found myself invested in Ballard’s fate from the first page and intrigued by the unfolding plot.

Besides great characters, another of Connelly’s strengths is the settings of his books. He demonstrates an uncanny ability to give readers a sense of “place” from the novel’s start. Within the first few pages, the reader feels they are right there in Los Angeles or, concerning books from other series, wherever the action occurs. This book is no different in that regard. Still, from the beginning where we find Renée Ballard and Detective Lisa Moore sitting in a parked police car beneath an overpass outside a homeless encampment waiting tensely for “the annual rain of lead” from revelers welcoming in the new year with a barrage of gunfire, this book focuses less on the where and more on the fast-paced what.

I like lead character Renée Ballard. No, she isn’t Harry, but she shares many of Bosch’s traits. But filling the shoes of the venerable Harry Bosch, Connelly’s most iconic character, is a big ask. Yet like it or not, since the author has aged Bosch in real time in the novels, Harry’s days are numbered. So, Connelly is passing the torch to Ballard, who will be the future of Connelly’s Bosch franchise. I know from experience, writing a novel from the point of view of a person of the opposite sex is challenging. But I feel Michael Connelly pulls it off with ease and sensitivity. I suspect the reason for this is that, as Connelly revealed in a 2019 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he based the LAPD detective Renée Ballard character on real-life LAPD detective Mitzi Roberts. Perhaps that is why Ballard seems so genuine and realistic.

Our introduction to Renée Ballard in this novel comes on New Year’s Eve 2021, as she and another female LAPD detective are hunkered down in their city ride beneath the Cahuenga underpass just before midnight, braced for the inevitable gunfire that erupts in Los Angeles every year to welcome in the new year. Both detectives are in uniform in response to a department-wide tactical alert, a status LAPD employs on occasions like New Year’s Eve with all hands on deck and every officer in the department in uniform and working twelve-hour shifts. The suspense builds from the first page as we expect the detectives will soon speed to a call somewhere in Hollywood. Connelly also throws in “Added to that, the Midnight Men were out there somewhere” producing immediate curiosity in the reader’s mind about who the Midnight Men are and what it has to do with Ballard.

Renée is obviously a quintessential flawed character. She shares one of Bosch’s flaws in that she is so relentlessly committed to getting justice for victims that she is prone to disregard LAPD policies and defy superiors when she feels they become barriers to accomplishing her mission to protect and serve. And, like Bosch, that often gets her into trouble. Another flaw is Ballard’s inability to move on from a situation where the department treated her unfairly over a sexual harassment complaint she made against a previous supervisor. So, she lives with a chip on her shoulder. This often contributes to the trouble Ballard finds herself in with both supervisors and peers. Many times, her wounds are self-inflicted.

And then there’s the current state of the LAPD and Los Angeles in general. Connelly touches on every aspect of it all—the worsening homeless problem, the defund the police movement, the open animosity toward the police by citizens, civil unrest, and the jarring collapse of morale within the LAPD. In the spirit of self-preservation, many cops have a adopted a turn a blind eye and do as little as possible philosophy to avoid citizen complaints in the highly politicized environment where they know neither the department nor the city has their backs. He adds the pandemic and its lingering effects to the mix. I have no doubt that Connelly has captured the essence of 2021 Los Angeles in this book, a city that appears more like a failed third world country than part of the United States.

I don’t do trigger alerts. The term itself is part and parcel of the disgusting coddling culture that has swept the country over the past four or five years. I say only that any adult who picks up a realistic crime fiction novel should expect to encounter a good amount of violence and this book has its share, including descriptions of violence again women. Interestingly, I recently listened to a talk by Michael Connelly where he acknowledged the violence in The Dark Hours, and explained why he wrote the book the way he did. The violence isn’t gratuitous or meant to entertain. I think after hearing Connelly explain it, that it serves as a stark reminder of the realities that we face living in contemporary society. As someone once said, life is brutal. I don’t think that has ever been truer than it is today.

Ballard and her temporary partner get the call that we expected from the first page, and she is drawn into a shooting investigation that turns out to be a murder, one that we soon learn shares a nexus with one of Harry Bosch’s old open-unsolved cases. Then we learn more about the Midnight Men, a pair of rapists operating in tandem, a case Ballard is already in the middle of investigating. So, like past Ballard books, we follow Ballard’s efforts to get justice for her victims while juggling two cases as she tries to prevent her bosses and colleagues from messing it all up.

The only thing some might find disappointing is we get little Harry Bosch in this book, not nearly as much as in the previous Ballard books. It almost seems like a cameo appearance. But I suppose we must get used to it. And the interaction between Ballard and Bosch we got was great and added much to the story.

The plot is twisty, and Connelly throws in a surprise or two towards the end. And though there’s some justice, we’re not offered complete closure–which was fine with me as I’m excited to see what happens with Ballard in the future.

Little, Brown and Company published The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly on November 9, 2021. I purchased a digital copy of the book used for this review.

Whenever I read a book by Michael Connelly, I am reminded of what a good writer he is and how much I enjoy his work. This is no exception. I was totally engrossed in the story; didn’t want to put it down. I really liked how he tapped into the “spirit” of 2020 with Covid and all the issues surrounding police. And, Bosch is my favorite Connelly character; so glad he played a major role in the story.



If you are not familiar with any of Connelly’s works, I highly recommend him to anyone who likes police procedurals and good writing.



This is book 4 of the series; I can’t wait for the next one in the series. It does work as a standalone, although do yourself a favor and go back and read the other three.

Masterful novel. Includes both Ballard and Bosch. Doesn't disappoint. Masterful novel. Includes both Ballard and Bosch. Doesn't disappoint.

A bit of a miss for me to be honest and I can’t put my finger on why. Maybe I am finished with Bosch for now. Thank you to the publisher, This wasn’t for me however.

Loved Bosch’s role in this book as he assists Ballard in her investigations. Ballard is fast becoming a great methodical detective and still on the night shift, she has really made changes in her life to make her the best of the best.

Hopefully we will get a Bosch book next year.

In The Dark Hours we find Renee Ballard and another female detective actively working on a serial rapists case. As she is working this case she catches another case that eventually leads back to Harry Bosch. This is not my favorite Connelly book by any means and I am said that he has seemed to replace Harry with Ballard. I don't get the same vibe from Ballard that I got from Bosch or even Mickey Haller. It's unfortunate that he seems to have aged out Harry because he is such a wonderful detective. Some day I hope he gets back to a full on Harry Bosch book but I will take these Ballard books if thats all I get.

Renée Ballard is a tough-talking, rule-breaking, and determined cop who repeatedly gets in trouble with her bosses. Because she dared to file a complaint against a higher-up who harassed her, the brass transferred her to the night shift in the LAPD. What was meant to be a punishment, ironically, turned out to be a blessing. Working during "The Dark Hours," the title of the latest police procedural from Michael Connelly, provides Renée with greater flexibility and independence. In this book, she becomes embroiled in two challenging cases. One involves the shooting death of a man during a New Year's Eve celebration. In addition, she is trying to track down a pair of serial predators who have been invading women's homes and brutalizing their victims.

Connelly's timely themes include the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, the fury that some members of the public feel towards the police, and the exploitation of vulnerable females by sadistic assailants. Although Connelly's iconic character, Harry Bosch, is on hand to give Ballard much-appreciated assistance and support, Renée takes center stage. She steps on the toes of important people, is warned repeatedly by her supervisors to toe the line, and then proceeds to ignore their orders in her eagerness to make sure that justice is served.

Michael Connelly brilliantly depicts the geography and ambience of Los Angeles. He contrasts the homeless people sleeping rough beneath overpasses with the upper classes who live lavishly in upscale neighborhoods. The jargon-filled dialogue is crisp, gritty, and authentic, and the action scenes are exciting and intense. Renée is not only trained to defend herself, but she is also smart and insightful. In fact, she is very much like a young Harry Bosch. What she cannot stand is teaming up with colleagues who are lazy, mean-spirited, and corrupt, and she suspects that there are few police officers left who are prepared go the extra mile to nab felons. Although Renée Ballard has her faults—she is tactless, insubordinate, and impulsive—most readers will root for this formidable heroine to prevail over her adversaries.

Another absolutely outstanding Harry Bosch/Renee Ballard book by Michael Connelly. The plot of this one involves a team of two serial rapists preying on seemingly random women. Ballard and Bosch team up to find the rapists. As usual, the criminals are smart but Bosch and Ballard are smarter. As always with Michael Connelly, the genius is in the painstakingly accurate details and slew of intricate puzzle pieces that come together perfectly. For my money, no crime writer is more authentic and intelligent than Michael Connelly. Killer mystery, clues, procedural details, interrogation and of course plot. I loved the developing relationship between Bosch and Ballard, as well as their growing disillusionment with the LAPD, while still demonstrating the best skills the highest level of detectives at the police department can provide. As a dog lover, my heart was extra warmed by the addition of a rescue dog named Pinto to the team.

Five shiny stars to my favorite detective Harry Bosch and my growing second favorite, Renee Ballard. Many thanks to Little, Brown, the author and NetGalley for the ARC of this first class mystery.