It has been a while since Michael Connelly has gone off the Harry Bosch / Mickey Haller / Renee Ballard reservation. Nightshade is only the third Connelly mystery not set in that world. The first two were the excellent Blood Work (also a great movie starring Clint Eastwood) and my all-time favorite Connelly thriller Void Moon. A Darkness More Than Night does not count as Blood Work’s McCaleb meets Bosch.
I must say Night Shade is a welcome change of pace from the rather brooding and dark mood common to the Bosch / Haller / Ballard trio. Detective Sergeant Stillwell of the Catalina PD doesn’t have many ghosts and his conflict with his superior is not as menacing and heavy as the usual such conflict in a Connelly novel. CLICK TO BUY AT AMAZON
After a mess-up in a murder case in the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department DS Stillwell is sent to Catalina, the island of broken toys, the place where all the misfit cops end up and where police cars are replaced by golf carts. He likes it there and has become intimate with Tash, one of the island’s harbormasters.
The body of a young woman is found anchored to a returning boat. Speculation is she was dumped at sea and her body got caught up in another boat’s wake. The young woman, Leigh-Anne Moss worked for the local yacht club where she tended to hit on the rich men gathered there. Coincidentally, a statue was stolen from the yacht club around the time Moss disappeared.
Michael Connelly is a clever plotter. All the secondary elements such as the beheaded buffalo, a drunk put in a cell for assaulting an officer, and the mayor pushing for a giant ferris wheel on the island eventually all come to play a significant role in the overall arc of the story.
Nightshade is the fortieth Michael Connelly book and it is, as I mentionned a nice change of pace from the Bosch world if you are a long-time fan. I appreciated the less claustrophobic and paranoid world Connelly has created with Nightshade.
Nightshade by Michael Connelly is a very good read. It will please old-time fans and is a different way to introduce readers to this excellent crime writer.
Nightshade
Michael Connelly
Little, Brown and Company 2025
341 pages
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