It was said that anyone who wanted to know Los Angeles needed to drive Sunset Boulevard from Beginning to Beach. It was the route by which a traveler would come to know everything that is L.A. : its culture and glories as well as its many fissures and failings. Starting in downtown, where several blocks were renamed Cesar E. Chavez Avenue thirty years ago to honor the union and civil rights leader. the route took its travelers through Chinatown, Silver Lake, and Los Feliz before turning west and traversing Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, and the Pacific Palisades, then finally hitting the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, its four lanes moved through poor neighborhoods and rich neighborhoods, by homeless camps and mansions, passing iconic institutions of entertainment and education, cult food and cult religion. It was the street of a hundred cities and yet it was all one city. -- Michael Connelly, The Dark Hours (Little, Brown and Company 2021)
This book is, among other things, a continuing paean to Los Angeles, that Michael Connelly began in 1992 with The Black Echo, the first book with his Harry Bosch character. Detective Bosch is now retired and in The Dark Hours he is called on for help by detective Renee Ballard, who works the night shift and first appeared in Connelly's The Late Show in 2017. The pair work together unofficially to solve two serious crimes (rape and murder) while Ballard's official partner is lazy and uninterested. Ballard in fact gets little help from her fellow cops, bogged down by Covid and morale lowered by Black Lives Matter. Ballard operates on little sleep and manages to trap serial rapists with luck, hard work and her willingness to ignore protocol and put herself in harm's way. Connelly is some ways an heir to Raymond Chandler in his affection and detailed portrayal of the denizens and neighborhoods of Los Angeles.
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